Updated 23 January 2026 at 08:58 IST
When Rivals Close Ranks: How Iran’s Protests Rewired Middle East Geopolitics
What the Iranian protests ultimately exposed was the bankruptcy of simplistic geopolitical narratives. The idea that the Middle East is divided neatly into pro- and anti-Iran camps no longer holds. Interests have become more fluid, anxieties more shared.
The Middle East has always thrived on predictable rivalries. Tehran versus Riyadh. Ankara hedging against both. Israel watching from the shadows. Washington pulling strings. For decades, this was the familiar chessboard. But the protests that erupted in Iran on December 28, 2025 - and the sudden prospect of a US military strike - scrambled those pieces in a way few anticipated.
What followed was not just a domestic crisis inside Iran. It was a moment that laid bare a deeper geopolitical truth: in today’s Middle East, fear of chaos matters more than old enmities, and regime collapse is a far more frightening prospect than regime survival.
At the heart of this recalibration stood an unlikely alignment. Saudi Arabia and Turkey - two regional powers with long histories of mistrust toward Tehran - found themselves rallying behind the Iranian regime. Not out of ideological affinity, but out of cold strategic calculation.
Protests in Iran are not new
When demonstrations began spreading across Iranian cities, they were initially viewed through a familiar lens. Protests in Iran are not new. The Islamic Republic has weathered them before, often brutally, and survived. Riyadh and Ankara assessed, correctly, that left to themselves, these protests were unlikely to topple the regime in Tehran.
But the calculus changed when US President Donald Trump publicly warned of possible military intervention in support of the protesters. In that moment, Iran’s internal unrest transformed into a regional nightmare scenario.
For Saudi Arabia, still recalibrating its foreign policy after years of costly confrontation, the idea of an externally driven regime change in Iran was alarming. Riyadh had only recently taken cautious steps toward stabilising relations with Iran, following a Chinese-brokered agreement that signalled a desire to cool regional tensions. A US strike risked undoing that fragile progress overnight.
Turkey’s concerns were even more layered. Ankara had been inching toward closer engagement with Tehran, with talk of high-level visits and pragmatic cooperation. More importantly, Turkey has always feared instability on its eastern flank. A collapsing Iran could unleash refugee flows, empower separatist movements, and redraw regional balances in ways Ankara cannot control.
Thus, in a striking diplomatic turn, both Saudi Arabia and Turkey, alongside Qatar and Oman, lobbied Washington to stay its hand. Old rivalries were temporarily shelved in favour of a shared objective: keep Iran intact.
While Saudi Arabia and Turkey diverge sharply in how they view Iran’s regional ambitions, they share a concern rarely acknowledged openly - Israel’s potential influence in a post–Islamic Republic Iran.
Emergence of Reza Pahlavi
The protests took a sharper turn with the emergence of Reza Pahlavi - a visible rallying point. His calls between January 8 and 11 drew massive crowds, with monarchist slogans and chants calling for the return of the Pahlavi dynasty echoing across Iranian streets. For many outside observers, this was a sign of regime vulnerability. For Riyadh and Ankara, it rang alarm bells.
Reza Pahlavi is not a unifying figure inside Iran. His appeal is deeply polarising. Non-Persian communities remain wary of monarchist centralism, while devout segments of Iranian society see him as an existential threat to the Islamic identity of the state. Yet geopolitics is rarely about internal nuance. From the vantage point of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the symbolism mattered more than the substance.
Pahlavi’s well-documented ties with Israel triggered fears that a post-regime Iran could tilt decisively toward Tel Aviv and Washington. Such a shift would radically alter the regional balance, potentially encircling both Saudi Arabia and Turkey with a new strategic alignment unfriendly to their interests.
This anxiety was not merely theoretical. Amid the protests, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan went so far as to accuse Israel of orchestrating the unrest - an extraordinary claim that revealed how deeply Ankara feared external manipulation of Iran’s crisis.
There is an uncomfortable truth here that many moral crusaders in international politics prefer to ignore: regional powers often prioritise stability over justice. Saudi Arabia and Turkey were not endorsing Iran’s violent crackdown. They were responding to a harsher reality - that regime collapse rarely delivers democracy and often delivers prolonged chaos.
The Middle East has learned this lesson the hard way. Iraq after 2003. Libya after 2011. Syria after its uprising spiralled into civil war. In each case, external intervention and regime collapse created vacuums filled by militias, extremists, and proxy wars. For Riyadh and Ankara, Iran represented a risk too large to gamble with.
US threats of military action
US threats of military action dramatically altered their risk assessments. An internally contained protest movement was one thing. A superpower-backed push for regime change was quite another. The latter could fracture Iran’s institutions, ignite ethnic fault lines, and invite regional and extra-regional actors into a free-for-all over one of the Middle East’s most strategically critical states.
What the Iranian protests ultimately exposed was the bankruptcy of simplistic geopolitical narratives. The idea that the Middle East is divided neatly into pro- and anti-Iran camps no longer holds. Interests have become more fluid, anxieties more shared.
Saudi Arabia’s outreach to Iran was never about friendship; it was about risk management. Turkey’s engagement with Tehran was never ideological; it was about border security and regional leverage. When the prospect of a US military strike loomed, those calculations snapped into sharp focus.
This does not mean Iran’s rivals suddenly trust Tehran. Nor does it mean Iran has emerged stronger or more legitimate. It means that the fear of an unpredictable future outweighed the comfort of familiar hostility.
Geopolitical impact
The protests of late 2025 may or may not fade into Iran’s long history of unrest. But their geopolitical impact is already evident. They forced regional powers to confront an uncomfortable question: what comes after Iran as we know it?
For Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the answer was unsettling enough to prompt an extraordinary response - defending, however reluctantly, the survival of a regime they have long opposed.
In today’s Middle East, that is the new reality. Alliances are no longer forged by shared values or ideological kinship, but by shared fears. And in the shadow of Iran’s unrest, fear proved to be the most powerful unifying force of all.
Published By : Amrita Narayan
Published On: 23 January 2026 at 08:58 IST