At the beginning of his first presidential term in 2017, US President Donald Trump made Saudi Arabia his first foreign policy destination. The continuation of the long-standing strategic ties between the two countries was in need of a boost, primarily through trade and investment.
This later fed into Saudi Arabia’s 2030 Vision Strategy that was launched by Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman in 2016 and aims to develop the Saudi economy in the direction of more diversification, production, services and IT development and away from its traditional dependency on oil.
During Trump’s first presidency, the question of the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel was also on the table. The Trump administration at the time was working towards obtaining a normalisation agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel within the context of the so-called Abraham Accords that also saw the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan sign deals with Israel.
At the beginning of the second Trump presidency, the global and regional context has changed, and this has taken on an even sharper trajectory since the eruption 15 months ago of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.
Over the past 15 months, there has been a reduction of Iranian influence in Syria and Lebanon as a result of military confrontations between Hizbullah and Israel in the wake of the latter’s war on Gaza.
The regime led by former president Bashar Al-Assad in Syria has fallen, and Israel, notwithstanding the current precarious ceasefire in Gaza, has started an incursion onto the West Bank, given political fuel by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week and an apparent endorsement by Trump.
Concomitant with this, the parameters within which the two countries are now negotiating their bilateral ties have also shifted.
Saudi Arabia has pivoted its policy towards a greater role within the region, one that is geared more towards diplomatic action than confrontation, including even with its long-term adversary Iran. In March 2024, Riyadh resumed its ties with Tehran after a seven-years hiatus. It has also ended its involvement in the war in Yemen, a field on which indirect military confrontations between the two countries were being played out.
In November last year at an extraordinary Arab-Islamic Summit that convened in Riyadh, the two countries were able to sufficiently set aside their differences to call for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza.
All these developments are now beginning to play themselves out with the start of the second Trump presidency. The first call that Trump made upon his inauguration on 20 January was to Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. On 23 January, the Saudi News Agency reported that bin Salman had told Trump that Saudi Arabia wanted to invest a further $600 billion in the US over the next four years, a sum which Trump subsequently said he wanted to increase it to “one trillion.”
Less than a week later, Trump was advocating a “clean out” of Gaza, with Egypt and Jordan taking some 1.5 million Palestinian refugees. On 25 January, Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE and the Palestinian Authority (PA), joined in the Cairo Declaration that rejected the transfer of the Palestinians out of Gaza, asked for a completion of the ongoing ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, and expressed the desire to work with the Trump administration in attaining a two-state solution.
The desire to work from the vantage point of a regional consensus has made itself apparent in Saudi Arabia’s regional policy, becoming more pronounced with the war on Gaza.
This approach has made itself apparent not only in positions related to the Palestinian question, but also to political initiatives undertaken towards Lebanon and Syria. Both countries, following the changes after the reduction of Iranian influence, have seen visits by the Saudi foreign minister.
Saudi Arabia is giving strong support to the new regime in Syria led by President Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
Premised on the objective of bringing stability to the region, these initiatives are also allowing Saudi Arabia to fill the vacuum left by the Iranian withdrawal in tandem with talks it is undertaking with Turkey.
Parallel to its political initiatives, Saudi Arabia has also been diversifying its sources of arms procurement. In July 2024, Saudi Defence Minister Khaled bin Salman signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with Turkish companies in advanced defence electronics technologies.
This is also in line with the 2030 Vision that aims to boost domestic defence manufacturing.
The Biden administration had made the signing of a defence treaty central in its policy towards Saudi Arabia, also to include US support for a Saudi peaceful nuclear programme, but it made this contingent on Riyadh’s signing of a normalisation deal with Israel.
With the developments in Gaza, and Saudi Arabia’s insistence on Israel’s recognition of Palestinian statehood, the deal has been abandoned.
Under the Trump administration, trade and investment ties between Saudi Arabia and the US will receive a major boost, but a divergence of interests related to oil has already made itself apparent, with Trump during his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos on 23 January calling upon Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down oil prices.
Saudi Arabia is currently keeping production at levels that it says maintain “balance and stability in the oil markets,” and it has consistently pursued a course of not reducing production in a manner that would compromise its own revenues from oil, which it needs to fund its 2030 Vision.
Even as it concedes the central importance to it of the US, Saudi Arabia is also forging links with major global geopolitical players such as China, Russia, and in the Middle East region, Turkey.
Riyadh is now also being considered as one destination (along with the UAE) for potential talks between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin aiming to end the war in Ukraine.
For the time being, the most pressing and contentious issue in Saudi-US ties is expected to be the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Trump’s continued carte blanche to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government coalition to possibly end the ceasefire in Gaza and also seize more territory in the Occupied West Bank has pushed the stakes of negotiating the Palestinian question even further.
What is now on the table pertains not to the establishment of a Palestinian state, but to the more immediately pressing issue of the continued implementation of the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, which was in part brokered by the Trump administration.
Should Trump make good on his promise to work towards peace in the region, this will allow a reconstruction of the devastated Gaza Strip, in which Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are expected to play a leading role.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 6 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: