Why Trump’s lavish Saudi courtship leaves Israel on the backfoot | US foreign policy

The welcome given to Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House was the most lavish of the Trump presidency and a flamboyantly clear statement of his foreign policy priorities.

This was advertised as merely a working visit, but it was more extravagant than any previous official visit. The president greeted the prince on the south lawn, the White House’s largest stage. There were men in uniform carrying flags on horses and warplanes passing by.

When he entered the newly gilded Oval Office, Trump was met with a stunned man. He held the prince’s hand and declared many times what a great honor it was to claim the royal friendship. When a journalist punctured that golden bubble by bringing up the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — the main reason Prince Mohammed hasn’t visited in seven years — Trump harshly criticized the reporter and his network, ABC.

He declared that Khashoggi was “highly controversial” and universally disliked (as if these were grounds for his murder) and insisted that the prince knew nothing about the murder by Saudi state operatives in Istanbul, directly contradicting the conclusions drawn by US intelligence.

Trump’s disregard for human rights and US intelligence agencies and his blatant fandom for autocrats are nothing new. US foreign policy changed decisively in this direction as soon as he took office for the second time in January. If there was a real change in the spectacle during Prince Mohammed’s visit on Tuesday, it was in the skies above Washington.

Trump confirmed that F-35 stealth fighter jets, which were on display at the flight deck for the visiting royal family, were offered for sale to Saudi Arabia. It was stated that the sale would not be conditional and the technical specifications of the Saudi F-35s would be the same as those of Israel.

If it goes ahead, the deal would go against one of the abiding principles of US-Israel relations, that Israel always purchases the best military equipment, giving it a valuable “qualitative advantage” over other US allies in the region. Putting this principle aside, Trump made it clear that he would achieve the best outcome because both countries are equally close to Washington.

“[Saudi Arabia] “Israel is a great ally, Israel is also a great ally,” said the president, adding: “I think they are both at the level where they should be at the top of the line.”

This is not language Israel likes to hear from Washington, and it was the latest of many setbacks in bilateral relations in recent months.

Potentially of equal importance to the F35 sale, the administration announced it would lift a ban on selling advanced AI chips to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The decision significantly boosts Riyadh’s ambition to become a global technology hub with energy-intensive data centers that will be the foundations of a global AI economy that Saudi Arabia and the United States can lead together.

Gregory Gause, a visiting scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, compared the goals of a US-Saudi partnership in the AI ​​economy to the development of Saudi oil fields led by US companies in the 1930s.

“This could be a really solid connection between the countries, a better guarantee of America’s commitment to Saudi security than anything that could be written on a piece of paper,” Gause said.

There have been other recent events that show that the United States has moved away, at least temporarily, from Israeli preeminence in its Middle East policy. On Monday, a draft UN Security Council resolution prepared by the United States included language about a possible path 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 against Syria, again contradicting Israel’s preferences. In May, he toured the Middle East to showcase his foreign policy; He visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but not Israel.

All of this marks a departure in US Middle East policy from what was arguably the high point in the US-Israel relationship, when Trump fulfilled Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-standing goal of joining Israel in airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, triggering anxiety in the Gulf.

“Saudi leaders are alarmed at how quickly the conflict threatens to spread across the region,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House foreign policy think tank.

“While a fragile ceasefire holds for now, Riyadh remains wary of another conflict breaking out with little warning.”

In the wake of the Iranian attacks, Netanyahu appears to have underestimated Washington’s support and gone overboard by bombing a target in the Qatari capital Doha with the aim of killing Hamas officials. Trump reportedly had little knowledge of a plan to bomb a close regional ally.

Trump reacted by belittling Netanyahu during a visit to the White House in late September, forcing him to call his Qatari counterpart from the Oval Office to apologize.

It is difficult for Israel to compete with the Gulf in Trump’s commercial White House. Prince Mohammed pledged $1 trillion in Saudi investment in the US economy. Qatar gave Trump a $400 million luxury plane to use as the new Air Force One.

Large amounts of money flow in both public and private spaces. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE together invested nearly $5 billion in a fund managed by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Trump has consistently shown that he is closer to absolute rulers than elected leaders. Prince Mohammed faces none of the constraints that trouble Netanyahu as he tries to keep his coalition together.

Prince Mohammed also repeatedly states that if the United States is disappointed, he will go to China for the equipment and security guarantees his kingdom needs.

Fears that Saudi Arabia might “lose” to China date back to the previous administration. This contributed to a reversal of former president Joe Biden’s stance on Prince Mohammed, from “outcast” in Khashoggi’s murder to a humiliating escalation to a visit to Jeddah in July 2022 and an infamous fisticuffs with the prince.

Some observers argue that the wind shifts over the past few months do not necessarily represent a “reset” in US Middle East policy. They point out that beneath the pageantry of the Saudi visit, there are more superficial aspects to the debate than initially appear.

Announcing his $1 trillion investment promise, Prince Mohammed did not mention a timeline. It is not clear how many F-35s the USA will sell to Riyadh. Many items on the summit agenda that could be blocked by Congress, such as the bilateral defense pact and the civil nuclear energy agreement, do not seem to be implemented in the near future.

The possibility of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords was raised, but was politely shelved by the crown prince. He made clear that normalization would depend on a firm commitment to a Palestinian state, rather than 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 regional analyst, sees little prospect of change.

“I claim that there is no happiness in the Palestinian file,” Levy said. “I think Israel has a very free hand. They took the hostages out and they are still bombing Gaza.”

But looking at the bigger picture, he argued that when it comes to U.S. Middle East policy, the more it changes, the more it will stay the same.

“If you take away some of the follies of the Biden administration and add in the familial self-interest of the Trump administration and add in the mixed reactions to events and some of the excesses of Israeli overreach, I don’t think we’re seeing a fundamental reset,” Levy added.

He argued that US policy had remained essentially unchanged over the years. “This is a policy driven primarily by people who have a very shallow understanding of the region and essentially take their cues from Israel and a few rulers in the region.”