Saudi prince faces big task turning Trump pledges into real wins

SAUDI Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was greeted at the White House last week with considerable pageantry and a series of pledges from US President Donald Trump, a mutual love-in that appeared to deepen the relationship between the two countries.

The bigger challenge for MBS, as the 40-year-old royal is known, will be how to leverage that rapport beyond Trump’s term in office. 

The list of wins ran long: Saudi Arabia was designated a major non-Nato ally of the US – alongside Israel, Qatar and Egypt – while Trump agreed to sell the oil-rich kingdom advanced F-35 fighter jets as part of a broader agreement to strengthen military cooperation.

Washington also approved the sale of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to the Saudis, and there was progress towards nuclear energy and critical minerals. 

This bounty builds on a more-than-80-year relationship and moves it far beyond oil, the traditional anchor of ties between the countries.

However, the substance fell short of the robust deals that Saudi officials had been pushing for during protracted and sometimes tense negotiations with American counterparts before the visit, suggesting more work remains to be done. 

That is a task complicated by reservations by many in Congress about the crown prince, and the belief that granting Saudi Arabia ironclad commitments is not in America’s national interests.

Those doubts were laid bare in the Oval Office last Tuesday (Nov 18), when Trump absolved MBS of involvement in the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen who was at the time a columnist for the Washington Post, despite a US intelligence report that implicated him. 

“All of the aspects that make Saudi Arabia a problematic partner are still there and are going to be on display as we move forward in an effort to turn this performative visit into something more,” said Aaron David Miller, a former US State Department official who is now senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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And this will not play out in just Washington.

Israeli concern

In Israel, there is growing concern over the Trump pledge to sell sophisticated military equipment to the Saudis, including the F-35s, without any substantive progress on the longstanding issue of normalisation of ties between Saudi Arabia and the Jewish state.

“The rewards of joining the Abraham Accords have basically been granted,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow with the Washington Institute, referring to the 2020 agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and others that Trump has been pushing to expand.

“After their visit, they are not in a hurry,” he said, referring to the Saudis. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he spoke at length with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday and was assured Israel would maintain its so-called qualitative military edge in the Middle East when it comes to weaponry and combat systems.

“From the report I received on the meeting, he didn’t exactly get everything he wanted – and I won’t elaborate further,” Netanyahu said in an interview on Thursday with Abu Ali Express, a Hebrew-language Telegram feed, referring to MBS. 

Daniel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Israel, said he believes Trump has held back on two key things the Saudis want, which he could tie to eventual normalisation with Israel.

Those are a full and binding mutual defence treaty – as opposed to the sparsely worded US-Saudi strategic defence agreement announced on Tuesday – and a civil nuclear energy deal that permits the enrichment of uranium on Saudi soil under American supervision.

The issue of Palestinian statehood remains, as ever, the major obstacle. 

As for the F-35s, Shapiro said the sale requires a review of how it affects the US’ legal mandate to sustain Israel’s military superiority. In addition, he said, there will be stringent conditions to stop China – with which Riyadh has growing ties – from accessing the technology. 

In Washington, Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, was among those who spoke out against bringing MBS too close. 

“The relationship with Saudi Arabia is a business transaction. Trump gives the Saudis national security favours – access to our most sensitive technology and weapons – and the Saudis make Trump personally rich,” he said on Instagram on Thursday, referring to business ties between Trump family companies and Saudi government entities. 

Neither the Saudi government nor a royal court official responded to requests for comment. Trump played down his family’s business links to the kingdom in the Oval Office meeting with reporters. 

Human rights progress

Abdullah Alaoudh, a Washington-based Saudi human rights activist, said he and other Saudi opposition figures have met with US senators and representatives from both parties to press them to support what he called the Khashoggi resolution in Congress.

That would mandate the Saudi government to go after who he called the masterminds of the killing. 

The group will intensify their efforts to link all agreements with Saudi Arabia to progress on human rights and the release of political prisoners, he said. 

“I am hopeful, but I am not stupid because I know the Saudi government has the upper hand in terms of money, power and influence,” Alaoudh said in an interview.

“But what we have is the right narrative that we think represents the Saudi people and also serves the general public of the US.”

Still, there are many in the US, both in government and the business community, that believe a deepening of American-Saudi economic, political and military ties is an opportunity that must not be missed – regardless of human rights.

“There’s a fundamental alignment between the national security interests” of Saudi Arabia and the US, “both the traditional ones and the ones that are evolving”, said Ali Tulbah, senior managing director at Washington-based advisory McLarty Associates, referring to AI technology and critical minerals. 

Speaking at a panel discussion about US-Saudi relations at Washington’s Middle East Institute, Tulbah said he has been told by Saudi officials there are more specifics in all agreements that have intentionally not been announced.

MBS hopes what he got from Trump on Tuesday outlasts the US leader’s time in office.

“You have to work the longevity in these agreements,” said Michael Ratney, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the same event. “We live in a political world, so you do what’s possible.” BLOOMBERG