Saudi Arabia’s new crown prince and likely next king Mohammed bin Salman shares U.S. President Donald Trump’s hawkish view of Iran, but a more confrontational approach toward Tehran carries a risk of escalation in an unstable region, current and former U.S. officials said.

Iran will almost certainly respond to a more aggressive posture by the United States and its chief Sunni Arab ally in battlefields where Riyadh and Tehran are engaged in a regional tussle for influence.

Saudi King Salman made his son Mohammed bin Salman next in line to the throne on June 21, 2017, handing the 31-year-old sweeping powers, in a succession shake-up. Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely referred to as “MbS,” has ruled out any dialogue with arch rival Iran and pledged to protect his conservative kingdom from what he called Tehran’s efforts to dominate the Muslim world.

In the first meeting between Mr. Trump and MbS at the White House in March 2017, the two leaders noted the importance of “confronting Iran’s destabilising regional activities”. But that could have unintended consequences, said some current and former U.S. administration officials.

The greatest danger for the Trump administration, a longtime U.S. government expert on Middle East affairs said, was for the United States to be dragged deeper into the Sunni-Shia conflict playing out across the Middle East, a danger that could be compounded by Mr. Trump’s delegation of responsibility for military decisions to the Pentagon. If the administration gives U.S. commanders greater authority to respond to Iranian air and naval provocations in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, things could easily spiral out of control, the official said.

U.S.-backed forces fighting in Syria are also in close proximity with Iranian-backed forces supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. military jets twice in June 2017 shot down Iranian-made drones threatening U.S. and coalition forces in southeastern Syria. The United States also supports the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen through refuelling, logistics and limited intelligence assistance.

“If we were to witness an incident at sea between an Iranian and a U.S. vessel in the Gulf, at a time of immense distrust and zero communication, how likely is it that the confrontation would be defused rather than exacerbated?” said Rob Malley, vice president for policy at the International Crisis Group. “If there’s a more bellicose attitude towards Iran, Iran is likely to respond,” said Mr. Malley, a former senior adviser on Middle East affairs under President Barack Obama.

Eric Pelofsky, who dealt with Middle East issues at the White House under Mr. Obama, said the administration had “laboured pretty hard to avoid a direct clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran on the high seas”, in part because it would expand the Yemen conflict and there were questions “about what the outcome of such an encounter might be”.

But Luke Coffey, director of the Foreign Policy Centre at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, doubted Iran would retaliate in a major way. “Iran has very limited ability or options to retaliate against U.S. forces in the region without suffering an overwhelming U.S. response,” Mr. Coffey said. “I think Tehran knows this so they will stick to low-level tactics like harassing U.S. ships in the Gulf. This will be just enough to be annoying but not enough to be considered ‘retaliating,’” he added.

Close relationship

MbS was the driving force behind the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen against Iran-allied Houthi rebels, launched in March 2015. He also appears to have orchestrated this month’s breach with neighbour Qatar, which was accused by Riyadh and three other Arab states of cosying up to Iran, funding terrorism or fomenting regional instability. Qatar denies the allegations.

“Theres a danger that his foreign policy instincts, that do tend to be aggressive, especially toward Iran, but also toward Sunni extremism, might end up distracting from what he wants to get done economically,” said a former Obama administration official, referring to “Vision 2030,” MbS’ signature economic and social reform agenda.

Mr. Malley, who has met MbS, said his attitude toward Iran “stems from his strongly felt conviction that for too long the kingdom has been a punching bag, a passive witness to Iranian action, true or assumed, in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s own eastern Province”. “His view is that Saudi Arabia absorbed those blows and now there’s no reason to absorb them any more,” Mr. Malley said.

That dovetails neatly with Mr. Trump who has said Iran promotes evil and is a key source of funding and support for militant groups. MbS has also developed a close relationship with Mr. Trump’s influential son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who at 36 is close in age to him.

MbS’ “desire to confront or even defeat Iran has appeal in the White House, where the crown prince has done an admirable job forging a relationship with the Kushners, who are of his generation”, said the U.S. official.

Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, had dinner with MbS when the U.S. President visited Riyadh in May 2017, the first stop on Mr. Trump’s maiden international visit.

Another senior administration official told Reuters that while Washington did not have advance warning of MbS’ promotion, it could see it coming. “This is why the President has tried to foster good relations with him,” the official said.

Germany’s foreign intelligence service long spied on numerous official and business targets in the United States, including the White House, Spiegel weekly reported on Thursday.

The magazine said it had seen documents showing that the intelligence service, the BND, had a list of some 4,000 so-called selector keywords for surveillance between 1998 and 2006.

Institutions spied on

These included telephone or fax numbers, as well as e-mail addresses at the White House as well as the U.S. Finance and Foreign ministries. Other monitoring targets ranged from military institutions, including the U.S. Air Force or the Marine Corps, space agency NASA to civic group Human Rights Watch. Hundreds of foreign embassies as well as international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund were not spared, Spiegel said.

The BND declined comment in the Spiegel report.

Germany had reacted with outrage when information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that U.S. agents were carrying out widespread tapping worldwide, including of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

Volte-face

Ms. Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany where state spying on citizens was rampant, declared repeatedly that “spying among friends is not on” while acknowledging Germany’s reliance on the U.S. in security matters. But to the great embarrassment of Germany, it later emerged that the BND helped the NSA spy on European allies.

Berlin last June approved new measures, including greater oversight, to rein in the BND following the scandal.

A car bomb exploded outside a bank in Lashkar Gah, capital of the southern Afghan province of Helmand on Thursday, killing and wounding dozens of civilians and members of the security forces waiting to collect their pay, officials said.

Omar Zwak, spokesman for the provincial governor, said at least 34 people had been killed and more than 60 wounded, including members of the police and army, civilians and staff of the New Kabul Bank branch where the attack took place.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but insurgent groups, including the Taliban, have in the past targeted banks where police, soldiers and other government employees collect their pay.

Security is worsening across Afghanistan almost three years after international troops ended their main combat mission.

Emergency workers and passers-by tried to help the injured, who were strewn among the dead. Ambulances and private cars ferried the victims to hospitals.

The blast, which also damaged nearby shops, came as Afghans were preparing to celebrate next week’s Eid al-Fitr festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

While high-profile attacks in the capital, Kabul, have made headlines, dozens of similar incidents in provincial centres over recent months have steadily undermined confidence in President Ashraf Ghani’s divided government.

Helmand, one of the world’s major opium growing centres and a traditional heartland of the Taliban, has been under particularly heavy pressure with large parts of the province in the hands of the insurgents