For the first time in seven years, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is returning to Washington, DC, this week. While crude oil has traditionally pulled the two countries close together, it is now the great power-chess game between the US and China that is making them join forces.
MBS, as the de-facto Saudi leader is known, and US President Donald Trump have much to discuss when it comes to peace in the Middle East. The chances of Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel by joining the Abraham Accords are slim. Nonetheless, defense agreements will be on the table, as Saudi Arabia seeks to bolster its protections in what has been a tumultuous year in the region.
The US-Saudi relationship has come full circle since the crown prince’s last visit in 2018. Since then, there was the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi – reportedly sanctioned by the crown prince – at a Saudi consulate in Turkey, which created major tensions. Those were exacerbated after Riyadh got upset with Washington when it refused to respond to the 2019 Houthi attack on Saudi oil facilities. Then, during the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden suggested Saudi Arabia should be a “pariah.” Biden then sought to ease tensions in 2022, as he wanted Riyadh to pump more oil to alleviate high inflation rates. And now the AI race between the US and China has pushed Riyadh and Washington closer together.
“[Khashoggi’s death] hung like a pall over MBS reputation in the United States,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Initiative in Washington, told GZERO. “Time has worn away the sting a little bit.”
The Middle East has also changed dramatically over the past seven years. Israel was locked in a brutal war with Hamas for the past two years, with a fragile ceasefire keeping the peace for now. More Arab nations are concerned about the conflict spilling over, too, especially after Israel bombed Qatar in a failed bid to kill Hamas leaders. Meanwhile, the influence of Saudi’s top enemy, Iran, has diminished, as its proxies in the region – the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza – have all been hobbled or even removed.
“Iran is no longer the strategic threat that it was seven years ago,” Ibish said. “[But] there is still this need on the part of Saudi Arabia for American security guarantees.”
So what will Trump and bin Salman discuss? First and foremost for the crown prince will be defense. There are two aspects to this: firstly, Saudi wants a defense agreement akin to what the US signed with Qatar, ensuring that the US will defend the Gulf state in case of attack. Secondly, the Saudis want to buy F-35 planes from the US – Israel is the only Middle East country that has successfully negotiated and executed a purchase agreement of F-35s.
“The US public and US government and Trump have been a little bit more critical of Israel,” Alia Awadallah, who was a Pentagon official during Biden’s term in office, told GZERO, suggesting that the US may be willing to sell to a country other than Israel. “[Saudi Arabia] will be trying to assess whether it’s actually realistic to get that type of sale through both the White House, but also through Congress, which would have to approve it.”
The US is sure to bring up something that has layed tantalizingly out of reach: the Abraham Accords. Trump is reportedly still pressing MBS to recognize Israel and join the Accords, arguing that the peace he successfully brokered in Gaza should be enough to prompt Riyadh to do so. But the crown prince has repeatedly said that he wouldn’t do this until Israel recognizes a Palestinian state, so the chances of him signing the accords on this trip are close to null.
“At a minimum, this requires phase two of the Gaza ceasefire being implemented, and Israeli assurances regarding the Palestinian right of self determination,” said Eurasia Group’s Middle East Director Firas Maksad. “And we’re not there yet.”
If there’s no agreement on the Accords, there’s likely to be more on artificial intelligence. It is this area – rather than oil – that is pushing the two countries closer together, per Maksad. Trump’s visit to Riyadh in May was all about AI, with Saudi firms pledging billions of dollars in investments. In return, Riyadh wants access to items like Nvidia’s AI chips for its data centers. Meanwhile the US wants to see those incoming investments, while ensuring that Saudi secures rights to critical minerals in Africa, grants US access to them, and blocks China from getting them. This trip will be a chance to firm up these AI ties.
“Although the headlines continue to be animated by the prospect of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia… that is the wrong lens to be looking at things,” said Maksad. “This [US-Saudi] relationship is increasingly shaped by great power competitions, particularly US-China dynamics, rather than anything specific to the region and the Arab-Israeli conflict.”