Saudi Prince To Meet With Trump In US After Weeks Of Tense Talks

When Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives in Washington he will be greeted with great fanfare by Donald Trump — much as the US president was given a gilded welcome in Riyadh earlier this year. He will hope to leave with agreements on deepening long-standing ties between the world’s biggest economy and the largest oil exporter.

Yet, until recently, next week’s visit was at risk of being postponed, according to people with knowledge of the preparations.

The two leaders have developed a warm rapport since early in Trump’s first term, and the next phase of the relationship has ramifications for the geopolitical balance of the Middle East. For all the smiles, though, there remains tension over security, access to AI chips and nuclear technology, the future of Gaza and the thorny issue of relations with Israel.

Crown Prince Mohammed, known as MBS, is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House on Tuesday following weeks of often strained behind-the-scenes negotiations between American and Saudi officials, the people said. The next day, energy and tech executives are expected to attend a US-Saudi investment forum in Washington.

Trump has made no secret of his fondness for MBS, almost four decades his junior. The trip is the first by the 40-year-old prince to Washington since the international outcry over the murder of newspaper columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

That killing drove a wedge between the US and the kingdom, though the relationship has been steadily improving since former President Joe Biden’s awkward fist bump with MBS in 2022.   

The question is whether the prince can capitalize on their bond following the glitz of Trump’s visit to the kingdom in May, when they announced deals worth $1 trillion, albeit a figure that was later downgraded to $600 billion.

The meeting also comes after oil supply increases by OPEC+, the cartel led by the Saudis and Russia. The hikes have damaged the kingdom’s finances, with Brent crude declining 14% this year to about $64 a barrel. But they will likely have pleased Trump, who has repeatedly boasted about falling gasoline prices to deflect political pressure over the increasing cost of other goods.

While much focus will be on the agreements that Trump and MBS will sign, for the Saudi leader the visit is ultimately about partnering with the US to build the foundations for a new Middle East, according to Bernard Haykel, professor of near east studies at Princeton University.

“The Saudis think of themselves as this beautiful garden in the midst of a fire,” Haykel said during a discussion on the upcoming visit convened by the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute. “They have a vision of a stable peaceful region and they are the hub and economic center of it.” They’ve managed to convince Trump of this vision, he said.

On defense, MBS is most likely to secure an executive order from Trump similar to one he gave Qatar at the end of September that would bolster Saudi Arabia’s security, according to people familiar with the matter. 

That would act as a placeholder for a stronger defense treaty when conditions are right, according to Firas Maksad, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa practice at Eurasia Group. MBS sees that as critical to his Vision 2030, a multitrillion dollar transformation of the kingdom designed to open up the country to more foreign investment.

The US and the kingdom discussed defense in the context of potential Saudi normalization with Israel two years ago, but that was derailed by the outbreak of war in Gaza. The need for a pact was heightened by conflicts that followed, including the 12-day exchange of missiles between Israel and Iran, Israel’s September strike against Hamas in Doha and the threat from Iran-backed Houthi militants across the Saudi border in Yemen.

“There’s an understanding in Riyadh that there’s simply no alternative to the US,” Maksad said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said discussions are ongoing. “We’re still working through all that,” he told reporters on Wednesday in Canada after a conversation with his Saudi counterpart at the Group of Seven foreign ministers meeting. “We’ll have some good agreements to sign with them. A lot of progress has been made since the president’s visit there.”

The White House referred to Rubio’s remarks when asked for comment. Both the Saudi government and a royal court official didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. As is the custom, Saudi Arabia will only announce the visit 24 hours before MBS is due to travel or on the day itself.

Saudi Arabia wants to order US-made F-35 stealth planes, one of the world’s most advanced fighter jets, according to officials on both sides familiar with the negotiations.

One stumbling block in the past has been that Israel is the only state in the Middle East that has them and wants to keep that monopoly, which it says is crucial for its security. Yet while the US is committed to ensuring Israel maintains what it calls a qualitative military edge in the Middle East, there are signals Trump is willing to let Riyadh buy F-35s, which cost about $100 million each.

Another major discussion point has been Saudi Arabia’s determination to import advanced American AI chips from the likes of Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., shipments that Washington has restricted since 2023 over concerns including the kingdom's ties to China. 

The US and Saudi Arabia touted a slew of new AI partnerships during Trump's May trip to Riyadh, including huge data centers in the kingdom that are contingent on those chip sales. But six months later, the US has not granted the necessary export licenses, frustrating some Saudi officials, people familiar with the matter said.

The two sides are trying to hash out security conditions for the shipments, the people said, and what specific reciprocal investments Riyadh will make in the US in exchange for the processors.

The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, recently secured its first export licenses under Trump for projects run by American companies in the Gulf nation. The US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, responsible for chip export controls, declined to comment.

Another challenge has been how to put together something substantial to announce on atomic energy. Any bilateral agreement that allows Saudi Arabia to build nuclear reactors may require Congressional approval. Saudi Arabia has long sought nuclear capabilities and US assistance, despite security concerns in Washington about the kingdom’s desire to enrich its own uranium.

Then there’s Israel and the war in Gaza, currently in a state of uncertain ceasefire.  

Under Biden, the US was in advanced talks with the Saudis over a binding defense treaty and civil-nuclear cooperation agreement in exchange for Riyadh agreeing to normalize relations with Israel. That process came to a halt when Hamas militants attacked Israel in October 2023, triggering a conflict that’s killed tens of thousands of people in Gaza and rallied support for the Palestinian cause across the world.

Saudi Arabia has said publicly that Palestinian statehood is a precondition for agreeing to formal ties with Israel, a red line that clashes with Trump’s repeated comments that a deal is a key objective of his administration.

“Presumably the White House wants a forward-leaning posture of Saudi Arabia normalizing with Israel,” during the crown prince’s visit, said Barbara Leaf, an assistant secretary of state during Biden’s administration and now senior international policy advisor at Washington-based law firm Arnold and Porter.

That’s “something quite difficult to construct right now given the fragility of the ceasefire and given that so much of the work lies ahead,” she said, referring to the Gaza peace plan announced by Trump last month and which Saudi Arabia was involved in preparing. 

While expanding the 2020 Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia is a top priority for Trump, it’s not a deal breaker during the crown prince’s visit, according to two US officials. Trump has tried to separate the Israel-Palestine issue from other priorities in the US relationship with Saudi Arabia, one of them said. He still wants Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize ties by the end of his term, the second official added. 

For Saudi Arabia, the position on Palestinian statehood remains the same as ever and no one is expecting a quick solution, an official familiar with the kingdom’s thinking said. 

MBS and Trump are expected to discuss the further implementation of the Gaza peace plan, given Riyadh views the 20-point document as a roadmap for any normalization with Israel.

Saudi Arabia wants to see “a clear time-bound Israeli withdrawal” from Gaza, plus steps that empower a Palestinian security force and government and lead to the unification of Gaza and the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority, Manal Radwan, a senior Saudi foreign ministry official, said at a security conference in Bahrain earlier this month.

“These steps are not the end goal, they are the pathway to the realization of the Palestinian state and implementation of the two-state solution,” she said.

While MBS has sought to deepen ties with China, his priority remains the US and to keep Trump onside. His decision to head to Washington — a rare venture outside the Middle East — means he will likely skip the G-20 summit in Johannesburg later this month, as Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are doing.

Indeed, MBS has a successful track record with the president, who said in Riyadh that of all the US partners around the world, there were “none stronger” than the crown prince. MBS will be showered with all the pomp normally reserved for a head of state, the people familiar with the planning said.

“I like him a lot. I like him too much,” Trump said in a speech in the Saudi capital in May. “That’s why we give so much.”