Saudi Arabia’s Quiet Windfall From the Iran War-and the Currency Shift Investors Should Watch

Highlights

• Saudi Arabia joined the BIS- and China-linked mBridge digital currency project in 2024, with cross-border transactions surpassing $55 billion on alternative payment platforms.
• China has pushed Gulf energy trade toward yuan settlement since Xi Jinping's 2022 Riyadh summit, though S&P Global warns meaningful scale could take decades.
• If Gulf capital and yuan-denominated trade expand, Beijing gains new channels to finance mine-to-magnet rare earth ecosystems outside dollar-based financial architecture.
• Investors should monitor Saudi Arabia not merely as an oil story, but as an emerging capital-and-currency hub shaping the next multipolar industrial order.

War is not only fought with missiles. It is fought through ports, payment rails, sovereign wealth, energy flows, and industrial supply chains.

That is why Saudi Arabia’s position during the Iran-Israel-U.S. conflict deserves investor attention. Reporting from the Financial Post (opens in a new tab) argues that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gained unexpected strategic leverage during the war. Other sources support parts of that thesis. Reuters reported the IMF viewed Saudi Arabia as relatively more resilient than many regional peers during the conflict, even as oil importers faced sharper risks. Reuters also reported Riyadh maintained that its fiscal position remained strong despite regional turmoil. Meanwhile, the U.K.-GCC trade agreement showed that Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, remain commercially central even during regional instability.

But could the deeper story be currency architecture? Saudi Arabia joined the BIS- and China-linked mBridge central bank digital currency project in 2024 (opens in a new tab), a cross-border settlement initiative that could reduce reliance on dollar-based payment systems over time. Transactions on a China-led digital currency platform surged above $55 billion (opens in a new tab), suggesting alternative payment infrastructure is no longer theoretical.

Separately, China has openly pushed Gulf energy trade toward yuan settlement (opens in a new tab) since Xi Jinping’s 2022 Riyadh summit.

The key currency is the Chinese yuan, or renminbi. But investors should be precise: Saudi Arabia is not abandoning the dollar. The dollar still dominates oil trade. S&P Global cautioned that Saudi-China yuan oil settlement could take decades (opens in a new tab) to reach meaningful scale. The signal is not collapse. The signal is incremental fragmentation.

This is Great Powers Era 2.0—a thesis developed by Rare Earth Exchanges™: a multipolar world where payment systems, energy trade, logistics corridors, sovereign capital, and critical minerals as well as rare earth supply chains become instruments of national power.

For rare earth and critical mineral investors, the implication is direct. China already dominates rare earth separation, refining, metals, alloys, and magnet manufacturing. If Gulf capital, China-linked payment rails, and yuan-denominated trade expand, Beijing gains another channel to finance and coordinate mine-to-magnet ecosystems outside Washington-centered financial architecture.

That matters because future supply chains may not be organized only around geology or price. They may be organized around blocs, currencies, security guarantees, and industrial alliances. Investors watching rare earths and critical mineral supply chains should therefore track Saudi Arabia not as an oil story, but as an emerging capital-and-currency hub in the next industrial order.