General Counsel

This article advances a thesis not yet articulated in the emerging commentary on the 2026 Iran War: the Saudi Civil Transactions Law (“CTL”) has inadvertently created the most contractor-favourable force majeure regime in the Gulf Cooperation Council (“GCC”). Article 97 of the CTL provides mandatory, non-excludable hardship protection which, combined with Article 471(3)’s construction-specific price and time adjustment, gives Saudi contractors two non-excludable layers of relief absent from every other GCC civil code. The article maps the complete statutory architecture, analyses Board of Grievances precedents, applies the framework to three project archetypes and offers an employer’s counter-analysis, a perspective absent from all published commentary.

On 2 March 2026, 47 hours after the first Iranian drone struck Saudi territory, the first force majeure notice arrived. By 19 March, seven had followed. The notices came from main contractors, consultants and material suppliers operating on active Saudi construction projects. Each cited the conflict; each demanded relief. Not one correctly identified the full range of statutory provisions available under Saudi law, and not one addressed whether the claimant had exhausted domestically available alternatives before declaring performance impossible.