Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) arrives in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, more than seven years since his last official trip to the U.S., for a meeting with President Donald Trump at the Oval Office. The visit caps a U-turn in how Washington treats the kingdom’s de facto leader and prioritizes the wider U.S.-Saudi relationship.
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The shift has been years in the making. Former President Joe Biden took office in 2021 vowing to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” following the killing of Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. But, recognizing Saudi Arabia’s importance for U.S. interests, the Biden Administration began to soften its stance. Biden flew to the kingdom in 2022 and struck the Jeddah Communique. Trump’s return to the White House in January and new regional dynamics are accelerating the return of warmer ties with Riyadh. Those ties go beyond mere transactionalism and are likely to endure.
Trump’s foreign policy toward the Middle East in his second term has more firmly moved away from uncomfortable co-existence with an Iran-dominated region. The unfolding events since the Oct. 7 attacks—which underlined Tehran as a key source of arms for Hamas, in addition to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and other militant groups—proved that Saudi Arabia was right in flagging the threat to regional stability posed by the Islamic Republic. Trump has taken a more hawkish approach to the Middle East, including in June when the U.S. bombed three nuclear sites in Iran. But he also recognizes the importance of partnering with a strong regional leader like Saudi Arabia to bolster stability in a rapidly changing Middle East.
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Trump, ever the dealmaker, sees Saudi Arabia as a major economic opportunity. His meeting with MBS will allow him to deepen the momentum from his first visit to Riyadh in May where he struck lucrative business deals with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. For its part, Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 to diversify its economy away from oil needs U.S. expertise in innovation, technology transfer, and investment. AI is an emerging shared interest, and a Saudi-U.S. investment forum will be held in Washington on Wednesday. The more that businesses in both countries grow together, the more difficult it will be for any future U.S. President to reverse course on Saudi Arabia.
The U.S. also looks to Saudi Arabia as its main defense partner in the Arab world. Trump announced on Monday that the U.S. will sell F-35s to the kingdom. Although the U.S. is unlikely to grant Saudi Arabia the exceptional status Washington has given Israel regarding the ability to customize American fighter jets, a durable U.S.-Saudi defense agreement to guarantee the kingdom’s security is likely. Such an agreement would be stronger than Trump’s executive order to defend Qatar, as executive orders can be revoked by future presidents.
It is notable that neither Riyadh nor Washington has placed political preconditions on their economic and security engagement. The issue of Saudi Arabia’s normalization with Israel remains unresolved as Riyadh insists that it can only happen if there is a pathway to a Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia knows it has a lot of leverage and will not budge unless there is a significant Israeli concession. Israel’s attack on Qatar in September have also deepened concerns in Riyadh that Israel is another source of regional instability. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. tacitly acknowledge that it is not in their interest to let any of this get in the way of their strengthening relationship.
An economic transformation in Saudi Arabia will have a domino effect across the region, bringing in more opportunities for employment, reconstruction, investment, and skills development. All those are urgently needed in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon—economic development is a main factor in stabilization in post-conflict societies.
But the viability of Saudi Arabia’s own economic prosperity requires the region around it to be stable. Economic incentives growing out of the partnership with the U.S. can therefore be a catalyst for working more closely toward long-term stability in the Middle East.
In this way, while politics may not be the main headline in MBS’s visit to Washington, it remains the underlying factor in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. With the regional order no longer dominated by Iran, Washington surely recognizes that its best bet for stability in the Middle East is to cultivate deep ties with Riyadh. The expected economic and defense deals to come out of the visit will help to continue paving the way for a major political reset in the Middle East.
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