Robert Michniewicz: “Agent z Rijadu” (The Riyadh Agent, 2025)

The work

“Agent z Rijadu” came out on 12 March 2025 (480 pp.). A series of attacks takes place in Riyadh, claimed by a supposed al-Qaeda cell; behind them lies a conspiracy reaching into the royal family and a secret alliance between the Iranian and Russian intelligence services intended to destabilise the world oil market.¹

Aleks Niwiński is approached by a Russian diplomat with an offer of dangerous cooperation. In the publisher’s English-language materials, the attackers turn out to be a radical Shia group; the Polish ambassador and Niwiński are wounded, the Russian rezident blackmails the ambassador, and the Iranian partner in the conspiracy is the head of the Iranian intelligence station.^1,2

The real background

The action starts two months after Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine – which the Polish Sejm condemned in a statement of 24 February 2022.^2,3

In the novel’s finale, a plan to attack the oil facility at Abqaiq is uncovered. That facility really was attacked: on 14 September 2019 missiles and drones struck Abqaiq and the Khurais field, temporarily knocking out about 5.7 million barrels a day; Yemen’s Houthis claimed the attack, while the US and Saudi authorities blamed Iran.^2,4

At the end of the novel Saudi Arabia breaks off relations with Iran. In reality, in March 2023 the two countries agreed in Beijing to restore them.^2,5

What is accurate

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to the publisher, the author worked operationally in places including the Middle East, while officially – as he told Histmag.org – he was an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the novel, a diplomatic post as an intelligence officer’s workplace is the starting point of the plot.^6,7

What is invented

The 2022 attacks in Riyadh, the killing of a Saudi minister, the wounded ambassador and the intelligence alliance are fiction – we found no source on any such events. The break in Saudi–Iranian relations in the finale is the reverse of what happened in 2023.^2,5