It seemed at times more of a lovefest than a summit, with the happy couple waving away suggestions from friends that they might be moving a tad too quickly, overlooking each other’s flaws, or hurtling into a relationship whose first flush might not last.
Yet U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House welcome this week for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – the modernizing reformer and ironfisted autocrat who runs Saudi Arabia – was of major geopolitical significance.
It was part of an audacious effort by Mr. Trump to recast American policy and reshuffle American alliances in the Middle East.
Why We Wrote This
Israel has long stood unchallenged as Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East. Donald Trump seems to be giving the top spot now to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, in an audacious reshuffle of U.S. priorities.
His aim is to transform that war-plagued region into one “defined by commerce, not chaos,” as he told an audience in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, six months ago on his first foreign visit after regaining the presidency.
The most dramatic of his departures from past U.S. policy was on show as the two leaders fielded reporters’ questions on Tuesday. He made it clear that America would no longer be in the business of nation-building, promoting democracy or championing human rights.
The crown prince, known as MBS, had last been in Washington in 2018. Then, the newly elevated 32-year-old crown prince dazzled political and business figures with his promise of social and economic reforms.
Yet just a few months later, a prominent U.S.-based Saudi journalist, the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, was lured into Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul. There he was murdered and dismembered by a Saudi security team – a crime that U.S. intelligence concluded had been sanctioned by MBS himself.
Asked about the Khashoggi murder this week, President Trump brushed the matter aside. “Things happen,” he replied, assuring reporters that MBS “knew nothing about it.”
Mr. Trump’s embrace of MBS appeared to signal a shift in U.S. alliances in the Middle East, away from a decades-long focus on Washington’s relationship with Israel as the defining priority.
Israel still matters. Its military power, its high-tech prowess, its importance in intelligence-sharing, and its critical role in Mr. Trump’s plan to rebuild Gaza and deliver wider peace – those are not going to change.
But in Mr. Trump’s highly personalized, deal-making brand of diplomacy, the pecking order is changing – with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu no longer guaranteed the top spot.
That role seems to be passing to MBS. “I can call him almost any time,” the U.S. president told reporters. “He goes, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’”
This week, they added substance to the atmospherics. MBS pledged $1 trillion in investment in the United States. Mr. Trump conferred “major non-NATO ally” status on Saudi Arabia, boosting MBS’s hopes of formal security guarantees.
The president also backed the sale of top-end F-35 stealth aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
In the past, Washington has removed some capabilities from weapons systems it has sold to Arab states, so as to preserve Israel’s military edge. This time, Mr. Trump suggested he would favor selling the Saudis the same F-35 version already provided to Israel.
Mr. Trump is basing his reshaped approach to the Middle East on personal relationships with leaders of other regional powers as well, including Turkey, and Gulf Arab oil states like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
A striking sign of the new approach came at a September meeting with Mr. Netanyahu, after Israel had launched a missile attack on Qatar aimed at senior Hamas officials there.
Meeting the Israeli leader, Mr. Trump got Qatar’s prime minister on the phone and had Mr. Netanyahu apologize personally to him for violating Qatari sovereignty.
Mr. Trump hopes that he can leverage his relationships with Middle East leaders to create a new regional arrangement that they will all find is in their interests.
The model is the 2020 Abraham Accords, President Trump’s main foreign policy achievement in his first term. That deal parlayed shared economic and security interests into a groundbreaking normalization of ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
His goal now is to entice a potentially transformative new entrant – Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich Gulf’s most politically influential state and home to the holiest sites in Islam.
But that would only be part of a wider picture.
The wealth of the Saudis and other Gulf states could help rebuild war-ravaged Gaza.
It could also help underpin stability in post-civil war Syria: Last week, partly at MBS’s urging, Mr. Trump welcomed Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to the White House and temporarily lifted United States sanctions on the country.
Still, Mr. Netanyahu remains deeply skeptical that Israel could prevent future attacks by Hamas from Gaza without enjoying military control of the territory. That is a view for which the otherwise unpopular prime minister has considerable domestic support.
Mr. Netanyahu has also opposed any talk of creating a Palestinian state, although such an outcome is a key MBS condition for joining the Abraham Accords.
Yet with the Israeli leader currently facing trial on alleged fraud, bribe-taking, and breach of trust, and elections due next year, Mr. Trump seems hopeful that he can allay those objections.
What better boost for Mr. Netanyahu’s chances at the polls, after all, than delivering a historic peace with Saudi Arabia?
