Donald Trump will touch down in Saudi Arabia this week for the first official foreign tour since he returned to the White House, with high expectations of securing a raft of multibillion-dollar deals. The biggest one of all, however, is likely to elude him.
The US president has made no secret of the fact that the lure of petrodollars from oil-rich Gulf states is the prime motivation for his visit, which will include stops in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Many of the US’s most powerful executives, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Fink, are also expected to head to Riyadh.
But Trump is unlikely to achieve the goal he yearns for: a grand bargain that would lead to Saudi Arabia normalising relations with Israel, as its escalating 19-month war against Hamas in Gaza roils the region.
“Saudi Arabia wants to keep the focus on the visit on bilateral relations,” said Ali Shihabi, a Saudi commentator close to the royal court. “Normalisation is on the shelf unless Israel makes serious moves that Saudi Arabia wants, an end to the war and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Otherwise it’s going nowhere.”
This dissonance underlines that amid the glitz and dealmaking, Trump will discover how the dynamics in the Middle East have shifted since his last trip to Saudi Arabia in 2017.
The deals — real and aspirational — will still flow from the Gulf states, which traditionally favour Republican presidents, manage some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds and will fete Trump at lavish ceremonies.
While wary of the president’s unpredictability and the repercussions of his trade wars, the autocratic states embrace his transactional style, and welcome his dismissive attitude towards human rights.
“He’ll be flattered from one end of the Gulf to the other,” said Aaron David Miller, a former US diplomat. “And unlike Trump 1.0 there’s much more substance in play.”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has already pledged that Riyadh would invest $600bn in the US over four years; the UAE followed with a promise of $1.4tn over 10 years; and Qatar is expected to make its own investment pledge worth hundreds of billions of dollars during the Doha leg of Trump’s trip.
Analysts question how they could deploy such a vast scale of capital in the timeframes, including Saudi Arabia as it grapples with lower oil prices and focuses on domestic projects.
The US is also in discussions with Qatar about Trump accepting a $400mn jumbo jet from Doha as a replacement for Air Force One, a move that has drawn criticism from the president’s supporters and opponents.
The US Treasury said on Thursday it would establish a “fast track process to facilitate greater investment in US businesses” from allies, something Gulf states lobbied for to accelerate AI investments in the US and ease access to American chips.
Last month, Trump issued an executive order to relax restrictions on some weapons sales and to hasten procurement procedures, something Gulf states — among the biggest buyers of US weapons — have also sought.
As Trump champions his “America First” investment policy, the visiting American CEOs are set to attend a US-Saudi investment forum on Tuesday that will have a heavy focus on technology, AI and energy, and close with a flurry of investment announcements.
“This is not a geopolitical trip — a trip based on a strategic vision of the region,” said Dennis Ross, another former US diplomat. “In the first term there was a preoccupation with making announcements about big deals and investments combined with big US weapons sales. I expect we’ll see a replay of that.”
Yet Trump will not be able to ignore the clouds. Israel’s offensive in Gaza, launched in retaliation to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, has outraged Arab leaders, who fear generations of their young people will be radicalised by the carnage.
Prince Mohammed, who was edging close to a three-way deal with the US to normalise ties with Israel before the war erupted, has described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as “genocide” and insists Riyadh will not have diplomatic ties with Israel until a Palestinian state is established.
This has thwarted Trump’s hopes of expanding the so-called Abraham accords he brokered in his first term that led to the UAE and three other Arab states formalising relations with Israel in 2020. But Saudi Arabia, a leader of the Sunni Muslim world, was always considered the grand prize and the key to getting other Arab and Muslim states to follow suit.
Trump will also find Gulf leaders pushing the US to reach a deal with Iran over the Islamic republic’s expansive nuclear programme as they fret about the risk of a new war erupting in the Middle East.
During Trump’s 2017 trip, a brash, younger Prince Mohammed and the UAE’s leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan were among Trump’s biggest cheerleaders as he prepared to pull the US out of the nuclear accord Tehran signed with the Barack Obama administration and other world powers.
This time around he will find Saudi Arabia and the UAE pursuing détente with Iran. Part of the reason is their experience during Trump’s first term, when his administration delivered what they deemed to be a tepid response after Iran was blamed for a missile and drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure in 2019.
In Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, it was viewed as further evidence of the US’s unpredictability and questionable commitment to their security. Now they support a new deal with Iran to end the nuclear crisis, after the president initiated talks with Tehran but — along with Israel — also threatened military action if diplomacy fails.
“The Saudis and the UAE have realised that if Iran is really menaced and attacked, they will be the victims of a counterattack,” said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. “So I think the Saudis have been playing a very important mediating role and also a kind of tempering role with the Trump people.”
Saudi Arabia has also facilitated talks between the US and Russia, while Qatar is mediating between Israel and Hamas, alongside the US and Egypt.
Diplomats say Gaza and other regional crises will be on the agenda. But Michael Wahid Hanna of the Crisis Group questioned how much Gulf leaders are going to be willing to expend political capital on these issues amid the exuberant deal making.
“They can’t ignore it. But how central is it going to be?” he said. “The lead issue is going to be economics and they’re not going to want acrimony to undermine it.”
Washington has been pushing for a short-term truce to the war in Gaza to secure the release of a small number of the remaining 59 hostages held by Hamas, including Edan Alexander, the last American citizen still believed to be alive.
On Sunday, Hamas said it would release Alexander after it engaged directly with the US, in what appeared to be a goodwill gesture to Trump ahead of his trip. Mediators continue to work on efforts to secure a new ceasefire deal.
This comes as Israel threatens to expand its offensive, and move towards full occupation of the strip, which it says it will begin after Trump’s trip if there is no new ceasefire deal.
“You can’t avoid talking about Gaza, but the focus will be on the economic deals,” said a diplomat.
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