The reception of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House was the grandest reception of Trump’s presidency and a clear statement of his foreign policy priorities.
It was presented simply as a working visit, but it was more extravagant than any previous state visit. The President welcomed the prince on the South Lawn, the White House’s largest stage. There were uniformed men on horses carrying flags and a flypast of fighter planes.
Once inside the newly gilded Oval Office, Trump came across as a charmed man. He took the prince by the hand and more than once declared what an honor it was to claim royal friendship. When a journalist broke this golden bubble in 2018 by raising the issue of the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi – the main reason Prince Mohammed had not visited for seven years – Trump lashed out at the reporter and his network, ABC.
He declared that Khashoggi was “highly controversial” and not universally liked (as if these were grounds for decapitating him) and insisted that the prince knew nothing about the murder in Istanbul by Saudi state operatives, in direct contradiction to conclusions drawn by US intelligence.
Trump’s disregard for human rights and US intelligence agencies and his fanatical admiration for dictators are nothing new. By the time he took office for the second time in January, US foreign policy had shifted decisively in that direction. If there was any real change on show during Prince Mohammed’s visit on Tuesday, it was in the skies over Washington.
Trump confirmed that the F-35 stealth fighter aircraft displayed at the royal guest’s flypast are available for sale to Saudi Arabia. The sale will not be conditional and the specifications of the Saudi F-35 will be similar to Israel’s.
If the deal goes ahead, it would go against one of the enduring principles of US-Israel relations – that Israel always gets to buy the best military hardware, giving it a prized “qualitative edge” over other US allies in the region. Rejecting that theory, Trump made it clear that both countries would get the best because they are equally close to Washington.
“(Saudi Arabia) is a great ally and Israel is a great ally too,” the president said. “As far as I’m concerned, I think they’re both at the level where they should reach the top.”
This is not the language Israel likes to hear from Washington and it was the latest of several setbacks in bilateral relations in recent months.
Potentially of equal importance to the F35 sale, the administration has announced that it will lift a ban on selling advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The decision significantly boosts Riyadh’s ambitions to become a global technology hub with huge energy-intensive datacenters that will be the foundation of a global AI economy in which Saudi Arabia and the US can together lead.
Gregory Gause, visiting scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, compared the US-Saudi partnership’s ambitions in an AI economy to the US corporate-led development of Saudi oil fields in the 1930s.
“This could be a real solid link between the countries – a better guarantee of the U.S. commitment to Saudi security than anything written on a piece of paper,” Goss said.
There were other recent events that suggested at least a temporary US move away from Israeli primacy in Middle East policy. On Monday, a U.S.-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution included language about a possible pathway to an independent Palestine, despite Israel’s desperate efforts to remove the clause.
A few months ago, at the end of June, Trump lifted some sanctions on Syria, which again conflicted with Israeli priorities. And in May he toured the Middle East to showcase his foreign policy, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but not Israel.
All this reflects a shift in US Middle East policy from what was probably the highest point in US-Israeli relations, when Trump fulfilled Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-term objective and joined Israel in airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, causing concern across the Gulf.
“Saudi leaders were concerned about how quickly the conflict threatened to spread across the region,” said Sanam Wakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House foreign policy think tank.
“Although a fragile ceasefire is in place for now, Riyadh is mindful that another conflict could erupt with little warning.”
In the wake of Iran’s attacks, Netanyahu appears to have taken Washington’s support for granted and bombed a target in the Qatari capital Doha to kill Hamas officials. Trump reportedly had little knowledge of the planning to bomb his close regional ally.
Trump responded by insulting Netanyahu during his visit to the White House in late September, prompting him to call his Qatari counterpart from the Oval Office to apologize.
In Trump’s transactional White House, it is harder for Israel to compete against the Gulf. Prince Mohammed pledged $1 trillion in Saudi investment into the US economy. Qatar has given Trump a $400 million luxury plane to use as the new Air Force One.
Huge amounts of money flow into both the public and private sectors. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE together have invested about $5 billion in the fund managed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Trump has consistently shown that he has more affinity with autocratic rulers than elected leaders. Prince Mohammed faces none of the obstacles that would trouble Netanyahu as he struggles to keep his coalition together.
Prince Mohammed also consistently makes clear that if the US disappoints, his kingdom will turn to China for hardware and security guarantees.
The fear that Saudi Arabia could be “lost” to China dates back to the previous administration. This contributed to the change in former President Joe Biden’s position on Prince Mohammed, from a “crime” for Khashoggi’s murder to the humiliating climbdown, his visit to Jeddah in July 2022 and the infamous clash with the prince.
Some observers argue that the changes over the past few months have not constituted a “reset” in US Middle East policy. He explains that, amidst the glamor of the Saudi trip, there are aspects of the discussion that are more superficial than they initially seem.
While announcing the $1 trillion investment promise, Prince Mohammed did not mention a timeline. Nor is it clear how many F-35s the US will sell to Riyadh. Several items on the summit agenda do not look like they will come to fruition any time soon, such as a bilateral defense agreement and a civil nuclear energy agreement, which could be blocked by Congress.
The possibility of Saudi normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords was raised, but the Crown Prince politely sidestepped it. He made clear that normalization would depend on a concrete commitment to Palestinian statehood, which goes beyond the vague, conditional language in Monday’s Security Council resolution.
When it comes to Gaza and Palestine as a whole, Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project and region analyst, sees little chance of change.
“On the Palestinian file, there is no joy, I would argue,” Levy said. “I think Israel has a lot of free hand. They’ve taken the hostages out, and they’re still bombing Gaza.”
But in the bigger picture, he argued that when it comes to U.S. policy in the Middle East, the more it changes, the more it stays the same.
“If you take away some of the particular idiocy of the Biden administration and add the family self-interest of the Trump administration, and add the mixed reactions to the events and some of the excesses of Israeli overreach, I don’t think we’re seeing a fundamental reset,” Levy said.
He argued that US policy has not essentially changed over the years. “This policy is largely driven by people with a very shallow understanding of the region, who are essentially taking their cues from Israel and some of the rulers in the region.”