The U.S. airstrike that killed Iran's top commander showed Tehran that it can't get away with its provocations, but won't stop the country from continuing with its agenda, a former chief of Saudi intelligence told CNBC.

"The taking out of (Qasem) Soleimani definitely has been an important step to check at least some of the ambitions of Iran after its very provocative actions in the past year," Saudi Arabian Prince Turki Al-Faisal told CNBC's Hadley Gamble.

"The attacks on the oil tankers, culminating in the attack on the Aramco facilities, and there was no response," he said. "This was a sort of a wake-up call to the Iranian government and the Iranian leadership that they can't get away with it."

Tehran has denied involvement in both incidents.

However, Al-Faisal said the death of Soleimani would not halt Iran's "agenda."

"It definitely was a very important step," he said. "Whether it would stop further activities by Iran to use the methods that Soleimani was very clever in using — I don't think so."

That's because the Iranian leadership has an "agenda and a project," he said. "That project is to be the dominant representative, if you like, of all of Islam in the world."

Tehran has used "surrogates" such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen to advance its project, he said.

"That is going to continue," he predicted. "Maybe less efficiently than when Soleimani was alive, but inevitably, equally terroristic and, in my view, evil in its intent."