EXPERT INTERVIEWS - President Donald Trump embarks this week on the first scheduled overseas trip of his second term (the funeral for Pope Francis having obviously not been in the “scheduled” category), a four-day visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Just as he did in his first term, President Trump has chosen the Saudi kingdom as his first destination, on a trip that’s expected to yield a flurry of deal-signing ceremonies – the business variety, as opposed to diplomatic agreements.
“I said I will go [to Saudi Arabia] if you put up a trillion dollars to American companies,” Trump said in March. “Meaning the purchase over four years of a trillion dollars. They agreed to do that. So I am gonna be going there.”
Much has changed in the eight years since Trump made Saudi Arabia the maiden global voyage of his first term. In the region today, a devastating war rages in Gaza, Iran’s power has been diminished by attacks against its main military proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, and the U.S. is now engaged in efforts to bring peace to Gaza and a new deal to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. As for Saudi Arabia itself, it has experienced a reversal of fortune on the global stage. Excoriated by the West for the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (candidate Joe Biden in 2019 vowed to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah” because of the killing), the kingdom is now not only hosting President Trump but also key investment conferences and even diplomatic negotiations involving Ukraine.
For President Trump, this week’s travel comes with a wide-ranging agenda. Beyond all the volatility in the Middle East, President Trump will be offering a reported $100 billion in arms deals and seeking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of other business agreements, involving civilian nuclear technology and AI-related investments and much more.
The Saudi leader, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), pledged $600 billion in investments in the U.S. over the next four years right after Trump took office, and U.S. officials are looking for more – from the Saudis and then the smaller gulf nations of Qatar and the UAE. The UAE declared in March that it would invest $1.4 trillion in the U.S. over the next decade. Tech titans Sam Altman (OpenAI), Alex Karp (Palantir) and Jensen Huang (Nvidia) are among those traveling to the Gulf this week, for a Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum to be held while Trump is there.
As an Arab official told Axios, “[Trump's] regional agenda is business, business and business.”
To understand what’s at stake and put the events in context, The Cipher Brief spoke to a pair of experts: Ambassador Gary Grappo, former U.S. Ambassador to Oman and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia; and John Parachini, a senior international and defense researcher at RAND and professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. The interviews were conducted by Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski and Contributing Editor Elaine Shannon.
The two interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
The overall agenda
Amb. Grappo: As with any U.S. president's visit to the kingdom, there are some items that are always on the menu for discussion for both sides. Clearly, the overall security situation in the Middle East, and at the moment, that would be a long menu – of most interest to the Saudis would be Iran and the status of those talks. Second, where things are headed in Gaza. We've heard a lot about what the Israelis intend to do in Gaza with this reoccupation plan, which has not taken effect yet. And then of course, when you talk about the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, and particularly under the presidency of Mr. Trump, there's always going to be discussion about investment interests, trade, and what the general security situation is like with respect to Saudi Arabia itself, and what the United States can do to support them, including the export of various defense systems. There'll be a big emphasis on security, trade and investment.
Parachini: It’s kind of like a billiards table. There are lots of things at play, and this is a very complicated environment at this time. I think the United States and President Trump are trying to move forward a number of things.
He's wanting to promote U.S. arms sales, and increase them with the Saudis. He's also wanting to encourage the Saudis to make investments in the United States. He's under some pressure from U.S. defense companies that are concerned about potential lagging sales in Europe because of the tensions between the United States and its European allies. He's also wanting to get Saudi help with the situation in Gaza. And he's wanting to encourage the Saudis to engage with the United States more and create a little distance with the Chinese, both on arm sales, but also on economic issues more broadly.
Overall, [the Saudi trip] is clearly a priority for this president. And he's wanting to counter the negative reactions to his global tariffs and the adverse economic impact, not only on the United States, but around the globe.
Arms deals and business deals
Amb. Grappo: It’s not just that a major interest of [President Trump’s] is investment and trade, and that that’s what he feels he knows best. It’s also most definitely in the interest of the Saudis, the Emiratis, and perhaps others. Those countries are all moving their investments to more advanced technology. They're looking at AI, solar, all of these things that the United States offers particular opportunities to them for their investment. Several months back, the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had indicated an interest in investing as much as a trillion dollars in the U.S. There will be that investment from the other Gulf states. So this – in addition to all the geopolitics – is a major item on the docket and clearly of interest to the president.
Parachini: We'll have to see what the real numbers are. [Trump] is a pitchman who’s trying to etch his profile as the promoter of America, and that he can get the people who have a lot of money, in this case the Saudis, to make big investments. The Saudis will, like any country, pursue their own interests, both short-term and long-term.
We’ve seen very large numbers of possible arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which will inevitably attract Congressional scrutiny – and particularly if it's the F-35s that the Saudis want. That will not only attract Congressional scrutiny, but of course the Israelis will be concerned about that and they'll press very hard, like they’re pressing very hard against any provision of the F-35 to Turkey.
So I think what's more likely is the provision of a fairly large sale of air-to-air missiles to the Saudis, which is easier to make the case for. And indeed the administration can make the case that we're bolstering the Saudi capabilities in case they're faced with a challenge from Iran.
I think [Trump] is doing what he does naturally, which is marketing U.S. equipment. Then the question is, how will the Congress react to that? As you know, the president made a similar offer of a large arms package in his first term, and some of that is still in the process of working through the system. It's been held up either by the Congress or by the administrative process, or by companies that have to work through the negotiations for not only the equipment itself, but also the training and maintenance packages. So these things go slowly. The State Department has said that from the previous $129 billion arms package mostly committed in May 2017, when President Trump and the Saudi government signed an agreement to modernize the Saudi armed forces], only something like $30 billion has actually moved since 2017.
These arm sales take a long time. And then, the Gulf arms market is a competitive one. While the United States is the largest arms exporter globally, the Saudis and some of the other countries in the region have sought to diversify their arsenals with Chinese equipment. The Chinese are competing aggressively in that market, as are the Russians, and to a certain extent the Koreans.
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The Iran factor
Amb. Grappo: We have information to indicate that Mr Netanyahu and his very conservative government were leaning toward attacking Iran and its nuclear infrastructure. And reportedly, President Trump nixed that, and in place he is pursuing these negotiations, which are proceeding reasonably well, although notwithstanding some pretty serious obstacles that are going to be necessary to overcome.
The Saudis will have something to say about this, and what is markedly different this time around versus eight years ago is that back then, the Saudis were not in favor of the JCPOA [the Iran nuclear deal]. And I'm sure they gave Mr. Trump at that time an earful about it, and that may have been a contributing factor in his decision to withdraw from the JCPOA. This time around, however, the situation is much different. The Saudis have carried out a rapprochement of sorts with the Iranians. They are trying to improve that relationship, as trying as that may be from time to time, and the last thing they want to see is another Middle East conflict, especially one involving Iran.
They feel they would be somehow sucked into that. That's probably a safe assumption. So they will probably be cheering Mr. Trump on in terms of ongoing negotiations to find a way to cut a deal that meets the minimum requirements of not only the United States and Israel, but of Saudi Arabia with respect to Iran's nuclear program.
Parachini: It's not clear to me that you have the same tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia that you did, say three or four years ago. And indeed I think there's a fair amount of open-source evidence that the Iranians have stopped launching attacks on Saudi Arabia at the rate that they once did.
Nobody in the region is inclined to engage at the moment in a major conflict. The Israelis have their hands full with Gaza. The Saudis are facing oil prices that are softening. The Iranians are pinned down in a number of directions, for a number of reasons, and they too are affected by the softening of the oil price. Both the United States and Iran will want to continue to have the negotiations go forward, albeit slowly. The United States may want them to go quickly. But these are complicated negotiations, and while there may be desires to move quickly, it's not going to be that easy. There's a reason it took a long time for the Obama administration to negotiate the agreement that it did with Iran, because it's complicated. There are a lot of issues and a lot of them are very technical.
Israel – no stop on this trip?
Amb. Grappo: [The fact that there is no Israel stop] is a bit of a surprise. That's not to say that President Trump won't visit Israel — the president likes surprises, and I know the Israelis are lobbying strongly to get the president to include Jerusalem on his Middle East visit. There's been no formal announcement. It really depends on what comes out of his visit to the Gulf.
As long as the situation remains unchanged in Gaza, I would have to say that the idea of a landmark Saudi-Israel deal is off the table. That would not exclude the other part of that grand deal, which would be a US-Saudi Arabia strategic defense treaty – which not include the recognition of the state of Israel.
If the situation were to change in Gaza, and if the Israelis were to indicate some willingness at some point in the distant future to begin negotiations on an independent Palestinian state, that would most certainly change the calculus. I don't envision that for Bibi Netanyahu, but on the other hand, getting Saudi recognition would be an extraordinary event and a real feather in the cap of Bibi Netanyahu. History will rewrite his prime ministry in a much different way if he's able to secure recognition of Saudi Arabia, because one can probably reasonably expect that other Arab countries and other Muslim countries will follow suit.
I think it's a distant prospect, given what we currently know about the situation in Gaza and Mr Netanyahu's attitudes toward the Palestinians and a Palestinian state. But sometimes Mr. Trump can be very persuasive.
Parachini: The Saudis are reported to have said, Hey look, we don't want to talk about Gaza on this trip. But this is a President who speaks his mind, and [Gaza] is obviously a part of the overall conversation. But whether the Saudis want to engage in that conversation and particularly given recent developments, recent actions the Israelis have taken, I think it's hard to know and frankly I think unlikely.
I think the Saudis are going to be reluctant to do anything, given the actions that the Israelis are taking.
Saudi Arabia’s moment?
Amb. Grappo: This trip, and recent diplomatic efforts, speak to the really extraordinary role that Saudi Arabia plays in the Middle East and also to the strategy that Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince, has in elevating the stature of Saudi Arabia internationally, not just in the region.
Of course, there was a visit from Mr. Biden during his administration, the first Trump visit in 2017, and now this one. They’ve played host to numerous major sporting events, investment forums, you name it. They really have stepped onto the international stage. And the real evidence is that they're hosting diplomatic talks, very high level diplomatic talks that don't involve the Middle East. For example, the Russia-Ukraine discussions. So this is all part and parcel, I think, of Saudi Arabia's grand strategy to be a global player, which they are certainly on the economic front – but now on the political slash diplomatic front as well.
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