EXPERT DEEP DIVE – President Donald Trump’s first official trip to the Middle East during his current administration may have tapped a well that runs much deeper than the significant tech and partnership announcements that were made in Riyadh.
With five cabinet secretaries and leaders from many of the world’s leading technology companies in tow, some experts on the region are focused more broadly on the U.S. using the trip to establish a new overall framework for the United States’ relationship with regional countries, a framework not seen since the 1930s.
The Cipher Brief spoke with former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at ODNI and current geopolitical expert on the region Norman T. Roule to go deeper into the lasting impact of the visit. Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
The Cipher Brief: Aside from the deals that were announced last week, how did this trip signal more of a shift toward the Middle East and what could that mean longer term when it comes to U.S. policy under the Trump Administration?
Roule: If you look at the way the world has played out over the last five or six years, you're seeing a transformation in geopolitics; the rise of middle powers, the role of capital that is being appropriately applied to using technology and infrastructure to transform societies and to draw together political influence. And if you look at the types of meetings that took place in Abu Dhabi and in Riyadh over the last two years, it's an astounding comparison to what used to take place in Europe.
Now, we have U.S. hostages from Russia being released through Abu Dhabi. We have Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jingping and U.S. presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump going to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Meetings that used to take place in Geneva are now happening in the Gulf. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda resolved - to some degree - their differences in Doha a few weeks ago with the United States playing a leading role. So, you're watching the Gulf play a role that formerly was assigned to Europe. But again, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have become the capitals of capital and are using this role in a very responsible way to for their own personal influence, but also in a way that is improving the stability of the region and the world.
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The Cipher Brief: Let's talk about some of that capital for a moment. There were a lot of announcements made last week touting investments on both sides. Sometimes deals that are announced on trips like these don’t really materialize but they tend to serve as great indicators of how each country is thinking about future engagement. What do you think the most significant announcement was that may have the largest impact?
Roule: I would suggest your subscribers take a close look at the deals that were signed, consider the DNA of those deals and then ask themselves, how important are these deals to the core strategic national economic and political interests of the various countries? You can derive from that, the answer to the questions, how likely are these deals to be funded over the long term, how likely are these deals to be executed, how likely are these deals to involve other actors in terms of ancillary commodities?
And you're seeing, again, technical, commercial, and military agreements that are all transformational. And it's the transformational aspect to this that is most extraordinary, because the United States and the region are, in essence building a very different future. And we haven't seen this since the 1930s. We're looking at a trip that, just like in the 1930s, the United States used technology, capital and energy - this trifecta with our Arab partners - to build a relationship that lasted 80, 90 years. We have just seen a series of agreements that involve energy, capital, technology, and geography that is, I think, meant to shape the next 80 or 90 years as well. I think historians will look at what happened last week as a pivotal moment in the region's history and in American and Western history as well with this part of the world.
The Cipher Brief: So, let me ask you, what does this mean if you're China? Beijing is a primary commercial and economic partner to Saudi Arabia. How are they looking at the announcements made during the president’s visit?
Roule: First of all, China has a Belt and Road Initiative. The Emirates, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are senior, strategic partners in that relationship. The Chinese also have a digital Belt and Road relationship and a partnership with a number of countries that are part of the Belt and Road Initiative as well.
I don't think that digital Belt and Road Initiative is something that we think about as much as the Belt and Road Initiative itself. And you need to put that into perspective because what we have done through our sharing of advanced semiconductors and these long-term technical relationships that we've built and established, is we in essence, are ensuring that China does not take our place in this part of the world. And it's important because Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have geographical significance and very inexpensive energy. They are in the exact location you'd want to be in if you were building a cloud that you wanted to use to connect Europe and Asia, Africa and India, and to sustain Artificial Intelligence cheaply using cheap energy.
That's where our technology would want to be. And if you're using that part of the world to connect the global north and the global south, the technology that is located there is likely the technology that's going to go to those other countries as well. So, we're now seeing that Western technology is likely to be used in those locations.
Think about what that means in terms of a lower risk of espionage from Huawei chips or Huawei technology that might be used by those countries. Think about what that means in terms of America having to worry about China stealing intellectual property by using those tools.
And lastly, many of the Chinese technology firms also impose requirements in terms of surveillance on other countries. So, you're able to ensure cultures work more freely by using American technology. So, if you're China, you're going to exist in those countries. It's always going to be their primary economic partner. Beijing has been - since about 2010 - the Gulf's primary partner. America is just going to exist as it always has on a different, more substantial, more strategic plane. Beijing is not going to be happy about all of this. It hasn't been for the last several years, but it's just the reality of the situation.
The Cipher Brief: Let me play devil's advocate. Given the security sensitivities around chips and who has access to them, when you consider the chip deals that were announced, how can the U.S. trust the Emiratis and the Saudis with these kinds of sensitive technologies given that they do have these close relationships with China?
Roule: That's a profoundly important question. And that question and the debate associated it has slowed this process and has been part of this discussion with the Biden administration and now with the Trump administration.
The Emirati government and the Saudi government have asked the U.S. to tell them what is needed to protect these technologies to U.S. satisfaction. They’ve said they would set up whatever security or regulatory processes that are required to ensure that U.S. technology is protected from leakage to China and to ensure that Washington can be satisfied that it won’t lose this technology to Beijing. And we can be satisfied that we are benefiting commercially from that technology.
This took some considerable work. Now, you're going to see in the Emirates, an extraordinary entity created in the world's largest artificial intelligence campus being set up. It's the largest outside of the United States. And that never would have happened had we not only had those discussions, but also if over the last couple of years, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia hadn’t taken steps to distance themselves from Chinese technology. The U.S. government has watched this in the United Arab Emirates, with the Saudis in their own way and the Ministry of Communications. And this has been something that we have monitored to our satisfaction that this deal - these deals - could be made.
That's a very positive step for the region. And I think it’s also a model also for other countries going forward, because we're going to want to do this with other partners as well and we now have a template we can use with these friends.
The Cipher Brief: President Trump did not visit Israel on this trip. Given what's happening in Gaza right now, what's your interpretation of that?
Roule: There is no question that President Trump's commitment to Israel's security is absolute. He has provided Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself against Iran and Iran's proxies and to conduct military operations against Hamas. He raised the Abraham Accords in every session he attended during his trip last week and indeed it was a prominent portion of his discussions with the de facto Syrian president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa. His commitment to Israeli security is consistent with all previous presidents. However, his not visiting Israel is unusual. It's certainly a message. It likely is meant to state that the United States is looking to the region to solve its problems.
This trip was meant to address certain types of issues; commercial, economic, military, and financial. The current conflict in Gaza, which is intensifying, is a terrible humanitarian situation for the Palestinians. It is complicated nature with the hostage negotiations is making engagement in the Gulf in general - and the regional stability - much more difficult to resolve. I think the time may be coming where the United States is going to be looking for Israel to adopt a very different approach to Gaza, but we probably still have some time before that plays out. But the lack of a visit is likely a message to the Netanyahu government.
The Cipher Brief: What about the lifting of sanctions on Syria? How will that impact Iran and their ability to supply Hezbollah and Hamas? How will that play into this?
Roule: When you look at Iran in the region, there are an important couple of facts to consider. First is that the Quds Force, the element Iran uses to maintain its regional proxies and terrorist actions, hasn't gone away. It has about 10,000 - 15,000-ish people in it. Its budget is about one and a half to two billion dollars. They still have an Africa element, an Arabian Peninsula element, an Americas element, and a Europe element. They need geography, however, to sustain their connection with proxies. And they've lost that in Syria.
They're likely going to try to sustain some operations in Syria through elements in Iraq or Syria. This will be difficult and unsuccessful. Their approach will probably involve activities in the Red Sea. Sudan is going to be important for them, they had operations there in 2012 and 2014. We routinely see press reporting that Iran is providing drones and perhaps other weapons to the Sudanese government. If you're Iran and you can get a presence in Sudan, you're able to have a much wider reach back into all of your proxies, but also into Africa. I think that's going to be the target for the Quds Force in the future.
So, in Syria, the goal of the Trump administration is to say, this is a regional problem. It needs a regional solution. The president of Turkey raised the lifting of sanctions first with the president. But of course, it was the Saudi crown prince who pressed the president and the president then met the Syrian president in Riyadh, which is a pretty strong message to say this is an Arab solution for an Arab country not a Persian country and we want the Arabs to pull Syria into the Arab fold to restore that economy and stability in a way that protects it. However, in a way that also brings security for Israel and the Abraham Accords came up as I say repeatedly in the president's comments with the Syrian president.
The Cipher Brief: Thank you for your time today. We appreciate this brief on how significant you believe this visit really was.
Roule: Thank you and I can't leave without saying thank you - for your daily work on the open source report - which I read every day and I encourage everyone else to read it as well. It’s a magnificent resource to make the world a lot smarter. Thank you.
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