Crosetto and Saudi Arabia's Defense Minister Had Another Phone Call About Deepening Military Ties, Without Saying What That Means Yet
Guido Crosetto and Prince Khalid bin Salman discussed strengthening defense cooperation and responding to emerging crises across the Middle East and what Italy calls the Enlarged Mediterranean. The call followed January's visit by Saudi Arabia's chief of defense to Rome, and comes months after Italy sent radar and anti-missile systems to the kingdom.
Italy's defense minister Guido Crosetto spoke by phone this week with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Khalid bin Salman, in a call both governments described in similar terms, strengthening military cooperation, responding together to emerging crises, and stabilizing a region stretching from the Middle East into what Italy calls the Enlarged Mediterranean. Neither side's public readout named a specific program, contract or joint exercise to go with the language.
That vagueness is fairly standard for this kind of call, and it follows a relationship that has moved beyond rhetoric before. In January, Crosetto hosted Saudi Arabia's chief of defense, General Fayiad bin Hameed Al-Rowaili, in Rome for direct talks with Italy's own chief of defense, a meeting with enough substance behind it that this week's phone call reads more like a scheduled check in on an active relationship than an opening conversation between two countries feeling each other out.
The substance, when it has appeared, has been concrete rather than rhetorical. Italy has already sent radar systems and anti missile batteries to Saudi Arabia to help counter the threat from Iran aligned Houthi forces, part of a wider Italian military presence in the region that includes its contribution to the EU's Aspides naval mission protecting Red Sea shipping lanes. Against that backdrop, a phone call about strengthening cooperation and responding to shared crises is less a new commitment than confirmation that the existing one is still active.
What the call does not resolve is the question hanging over all of Italy's regional defense diplomacy right now, how far Rome is actually willing to go, and how fast. Crosetto has said elsewhere that Italy would expand its Red Sea naval commitment once other European countries match it, a conditional offer rather than an unconditional one. A warm phone call with Riyadh fits the same pattern, real cooperation already happening quietly in the background, paired with public language vague enough to commit Italy to very little beyond saying the relationship matters.
