Saudi Arabia is not on pause – neither should you be

When US and Israeli forces struck Iran on 28 February this year, the ripple effects across the Gulf were swift. And for business leaders who had been tracking Saudi Arabia as a market entry destination, the instinct was to wait.

Fifteen years of working in the Kingdom has taught me that this instinct, however understandable, is the one that costs companies the most in the long run. What is happening in the region right now is significant, and it is worth reading carefully rather than from a distance.

The conflict in context

The ceasefire between the United States and Iran, signed on 8 April 2026, is holding and has been extended. Saudi airports in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, and Madinah remain operational, while some carriers have adjusted routings, and the Jeddah Flight Information Region is operating with modified routings. But Saudi and Gulf carriers have continued flying, routes are being steadily restored, and Riyadh emerged during the most disruptive weeks as the most reliable departure point in the Gulf – drawing travellers from across the Gulf seeking reliable connections.

That operational resilience reflects something worth understanding about Saudi Arabia's position in this conflict. The Kingdom actively worked to de-escalate rather than align with either side, and the Saudi government has continued to govern, invest, and implement the structural programme it has been building since 2016. The Council of Economic and Development Affairs confirmed in late April that Vision 2030 has now entered its third and final phase, running through to 2030. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman affirmed that the pace of delivery would accelerate rather than retreat, describing the programme as having maintained momentum through the turbulence.

A recalibrated programme, not a derailed one

The PIF's new 2026-2030 strategy, approved in February, brings a sharper focus on sectors with near-term commercial returns: AI and technology infrastructure, mining and manufacturing, logistics, and religious tourism. Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan made the underlying intent clear in late 2025: the Kingdom is willing to make hard choices about where capital goes and where it does not. When a government follows through on that kind of institutional discipline, it tends to reassure serious long-term investors more than any amount of project renders ever did.

On the FDI front, what is taking place looks more like a reassessment of timing than a withdrawal of intent. Investors are reconsidering when to deploy capital, not revisiting the underlying case for the Kingdom – and that case remains intact. Saudi Arabia's real GDP reached USD 1.3 trillion in 2025, with non-oil sectors now accounting for 55% of output; FDI has grown fivefold since 2017; more than 700 international companies have established regional headquarters in-Kingdom; and the government's target of USD 103 billion in annual foreign investment by 2030 remains the strategic direction. Vision 2030 had achieved 85% of its programme initiatives on time or ahead of schedule before the crisis began, and the third phase is designed to consolidate those gains and build on them.

Why the pause is the risk

The clients I know who are navigating the current period with the most confidence are those who were already established in the Kingdom before February – with licenses, local teams, and institutional relationships that took years to build. From that position, a period of elevated regional uncertainty is manageable. For those still outside looking in, the same period feels like a reason to wait, it is more usefully understood as a reason to move with confidence now.

The in-country presence requirement for companies seeking Saudi government contracts has not been relaxed during the conflict, and the Ministry of Investment has continued processing applications throughout. The Kingdom's regulatory reforms – over 1,000 procedural and legislative changes implemented in a single year, 666 licenses converted to instant-approval status, a modernised Companies Law, and a functioning bankruptcy framework – represent a decade of deliberate institutional construction that was never contingent on geopolitical calm, and has not been reversed by its absence.

The recalibration of Vision 2030 has also, in a practical sense, clarified the landscape. AI and technology infrastructure, logistics, minerals, and religious tourism are now funded priorities with explicit PIF backing under the new five-year strategy – no longer aspirational categories competing for attention with a hundred other initiatives. Companies that understand which sectors are moving and arrive with credibility before the window narrows further will be in a materially different position from those who arrive after the fact.

Reading the market from the inside

Fifteen years of in-Kingdom operations have given me a working familiarity with how Saudi Arabia's institutions behave under pressure – where processes adapt, where they hold firm, and which corners of the opportunity landscape remain viable or become more so when the external environment is difficult. That depth of knowledge is most valuable precisely when the view from the outside is noisier than the reality on the ground.

Saudi Arabia has weathered oil price crashes, a global pandemic, and sustained geopolitical pressure since Vision 2030 was launched, and the structural reform programme has continued through each of them. The non-oil economy has grown in every one of those periods, and the government's commitment to attracting and retaining international business has tended to strengthen rather than soften as conditions have become more challenging.

The question for business leaders in the UK, the US, and across the Gulf is not whether Saudi Arabia will recover its trajectory – the evidence of the past decade makes a reasonable case that it will. The more pressing question is whether your organisation will be positioned to benefit when it does, or whether a decision taken in the coming months to wait for cleaner conditions will mean arriving in a market where the relationships, the licenses, and the institutional trust have already been established by someone else. In Saudi Arabia, these things are built slowly. They are very difficult to compress.