Instead of attacking Yemen

I personally believe that Saudi Arabia has made an enormously erroneous move by attacking the Houthis in Yemen and being stuck in a war that only benefits Al-Qaeda.

But I understand that sometimes countries need to exert their influence to make the world a better place. So the question therein lies: what would have been a better alternative for Saudi Arabia than attacking Yemen?

Well, attacking Syria would have been even more disastrous. Russia would have stepped in and completely pushed back Saudi Arabia from overthrowing the Assad Government.

In order to decrease Iranian influence in the region, it would have better served Saudi Arabia to exert an enormous amount of air power in Iraq against ISIS - maybe even send troops there. Such a move could have been supported with the opening of a Saudi Embassy in Baghdad, high level meetings between their two governments and Saudi promising to invest in Iraqi infrastructure after ISIS' defeat.

ISIS represents an even greater threat to Saudi Arabia than Iran does. So it is in Saudi's interest to destroy ISIS at all costs, especially when Iraq borders Saudi Arabia.

But in addition to this, Saudi Arabia could strengthen Iraq as a sovereign nation to get it out of Iranian influence. It could push for the Iraqi Shi'ites to be less obedient to Iran and more obedient to Ayatollah Ali As-Sistani and, subsequently, help fund Sistani's Iraqi Shi'ism against the Iranian Shi'ism, because they are different.

Not only so, but Saudi could have sent its own Shi'ites on scholarship to study Iraqi Shi'ism in Iraq, to stop them being radicalised by Iran. Iraq could have even been invited into the GCC. That would be one way to certainly make Iraq more balanced between Iran and the Gulf states.

If strengthening relations between Iraq and Saudi Arabia wasn't enough, Saudi could have perhaps done an air campaign in Libya on the side of Haftar Al-Khalifa. This would have also strengthened Saudi's position in the region far more than an attack on the Houthis has.

Correspondingly, Saudi could have withdrawn from the ISIS campaign in Syria and cut off all diplomacy with the Houthi-occupied Yemen. That way Saudi would have still been seen as "sticking it" to Iran while also helping make the region more stable.

There are more ways to defeat Iran than just by bombing their allies.