Saudi Arabia engages sectarian ideology as much for domestic purposes as for regional ones. Vis-à-vis the New Middle East Cold War with its rival, Iran, sectarian rhetoric in the Kingdom is overridden by the deeper currents of strategy and is subordinate to designs on Saudi regional leadership and expansionism, both being platforms of competition with Iran. As a theocratic state constituted by a ‘marriage’ of politics (absolute monarchy) and religion (conservative Sunni Wahhabism), regime sectarianism in Saudi Arabia acts as counter-revolution; likewise, the way region revolutionary developments (e.g., in Bahrain and Yemen in 2011) affect internal politics and stability informs the shape of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) foreign policy. With Wahhabism in friction with the Shi’i minority and the monarchy’s fears of an uprising by Shi’i communities inspired by revolutionary movements over its borders, sectarian and security discourse and policy intersect in the KSA’s military intervention in Yemen by identifying an ‘external threat’ (i.e., Shi’i Iran and ‘Shi’i’ Houthis) and then demonstrating the Saudi state’s commitment to respecting the clerics’ demands and protecting its Sunni majority against a potential ‘Shi’i incursion.’ Couched in the propaganda of restoring to the Yemeni people their ‘legitimate’ government and neutralizing Ansar Allah as the ‘proxies of Iran’ is individual ambition and state expansionism.