By a stroke of good luck, Al-Arabiya TV invited me to Riyadh to take part in the commentary on last week’s US-Saudi and Gulf Summits. It was not the first time I covered important summits in recent years.
But I knew this occasion would have a sharp and intense flavour given that the US would be represented by Donald Trump, who few would dispute has certain characteristics that set him apart from his predecessors and probably all future presidents.
The summits occurred against an extremely fraught and complex background on multiple international and regional fronts. As I wrote previously under the headline ‘Global explosion’, the war in Ukraine has become entangled with the war against Gaza, which, in turn, has expanded to encompass an area from the Gulf to the Red Sea and from there to the Mediterranean. It remained only for it to extend to Iran in order to blow up into what could be World War III.
The tension in the Arab region also erupted in the Sudanese crisis, which rivals Gaza in displacement and civilian casualties. Other conflicts have broken out in the Horn of Africa while, in Libya, some of the abundant militias have attacked the prime minister, setting Tripoli aflame again. As though this were not enough, a skirmish flared between India and Pakistan — both nuclear powers. Who knows what that could have led to?
This grim situation weighs very heavily on Arab leaderships, especially in countries that are implementing comprehensive development programmes with major targets set for 2030, a year expected to mark a qualitative leap forward for Arab peoples aspiring for development and progress in a stable region.
The Riyadh Summit was unprecedented in other ways. The unusual degree of warmth between the Arab and US heads of state suggested that Arab-US relations could reach new horizons given the necessary courage and wisdom. Also noteworthy is how “geoeconomic” relations dominated the first day’s agenda.
It is uncommon for a US president to visit a country accompanied by a host of economic leaders, including some of the world’s richest billionaires at the forefront of the global IT and AI revolutions. Their very presence said that investments would flow into Saudi Arabia in areas related to its “Vision 2030” which embraces the various dimensions of the fourth industrial revolution.
But this was a two-way street: Saudi investments would simultaneously flow into the US in areas related to security and defence and into the research labs at the frontiers of the latest advances in science and technology. The message was clear: some Arabs will not abandon their aspirations for progress no matter how others — Arab or otherwise — try to push them towards the gates of geopolitical hell.
Trump’s visits to Qatar and the UAE were similar. But the sum of these together with the US-Gulf Summit was greater than its parts in terms of their geopolitical dimensions. The high point came on the first day of the Gulf Summit with the surprise arrival of the Syrian president to Riyadh. Although other anticipated surprises did not materialise, that of Syria culminated in the lifting of US sanctions against Syria and a surprising chemistry between Trump and Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
The event, as a whole, crowned a series of strategic shifts, not least the US-Houthi ceasefire and the restart of US-Iranian talks over Iran’s nuclear programme. Israel, meanwhile, is in negotiations for a ceasefire that could change so much.
The Middle East is no longer the same after this profound geoeconomic exchange and after the shift in the Syrian position towards a peace-oriented approach to Israel. What all this tells us is that: first, the US has returned to the Middle East, ready to deal with both its conflicts and peace-efforts; second, the driving superpower in the region is the US, not Israel; and third, the Arabs’ ability to influence vital economic, financial and technological fields in the US can compete with the power of the Israeli lobby. How all this will work is encapsulated in the headline of this article, “What next?”
What is certain is that the US will now study what actions to take in light of all the recent developments, not least the distinction of having forestalled a potential nuclear flareup in the Indian subcontinent. But Arab leaders, too, must grasp the moment and invest it wisely in peace and development, which entails pushing for the two-state solution. As always there remain two inescapable questions: What are we to do about the Palestinian state, and what are we to do about the Israeli state?
* A version of this article appears in print in the 22 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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