US President Donald Trump meets with Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on November 18, 2025. AFP
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman was welcomed as a monarch on his first official visit to the US since the 2018 killing of opposition journalist Jamal Khashogji by Saudi agents at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Trump gave the Crown Prince a red-carpet reception, a rare F-35 flyover, a black-tie dinner, and an investment conference featuring the titans of Silicon Valley and private equity. But the visit carried more than this show of warmth and friendliness.
The announced figures of future Saudi investments in America are promised to reach one trillion dollars. Yet there is a lot in it for both parties. The American media stressed the visit as an effort to rehabilitate Bin Salman, a valued US security partner.
Some even hinted at the prospect of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords: the normalisation of relations with Israel signed by UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020. Others noted that the visit is not good for Israel, as the Saudis are linking normalisation to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Some have questioned the US’ readiness to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia that undermine Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the Middle East. The New York Times and Washington Post editorials on the visit focused on Trump’s behaviour, diluting criticism of Bin Salman by speaking of “imperfect partners” and the “unpleasant reality of geopolitics.”
Regarding the money that Saudi Arabia promised the US, many commentators drew analogies with previous announcements in hundreds of billions that ended up not materialising. As Andrew Leber, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Programme, pointed out, “many of these deals are less than meets the eye — either huge numbers announced solely to grab headlines or initial agreements that will take further negotiations to lock in.”
According to Andrew Hammond of Oxford University: “So much of what we’re seeing is theatre and what translates into reality isn’t clear.” This is typical of the American president announcing “big, beautiful” things that often amount to less than they say.
The greatest benefit to Saudi Arabia from the visit might be its new status as a major non-NATO ally (MNNA). The official Saudi media hailed that fact, claiming Saudi Arabia was the first MNNA to visit the United States though it is in fact 21st, including Taiwan, and the ninth in the Middle East and North Africa.
“What the Saudis want is nuclear energy technology and F35s. But that would require approval by Congress. Both the UAE and Turkey thought they were getting F35s until they didn’t. Saudi investments in the US are talks to please Trump, unlikely to happen. That’s because Vision 2030 is already stumbling as a result of oil prices being much lower than Saudi Arabia’s budget break-even point,” Hammond told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Even the deals agreed on are not what the optimists are portraying. Leber says in a commentary on the Carnegie Endowment website that “MNNA status falls a bit short of the security guarantees Trump afforded Qatar in a September executive order. Saudi Arabia also failed to secure — at least so far — a nuclear energy cooperation agreement like the one made with the UAE in 2009. And while Saudi AI firm HUMAIN gained access to the most advanced Nvidia chips, it did so at the exact same time and by the exact same number of chips as Emirati firm G42.”
On the Gaza situation, it was not clear if Trump managed to convince the Crown Prince to be involved in his plan for the Strip, or even bring the Saudis closer to normalisation with Israel. James Stavridis, a retired US Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and vice-chairman of global affairs at the Carlyle Group, wrote in a Bloomberg opinion piece: “Military-to-military cooperation between the Israelis and Saudis is shrouded in secrecy, but in the aftermath of the new US-Saudi defence pact, these operations could come out of the shadows.”
The Saudis have always maintained the position that there will be no normalisation if the Palestinian issue is not settled. Whether the visit produced any tangible progress on this is not clear. Hammond says, “the Saudi position has become murky. Before 7 October, they were talking about a deal in return for vague Israeli promises of progress on a Palestinian state. Then, during the Gaza mass murder, this shifted to normalisation without a simultaneously created state. In recent weeks the position has shifted back to talk about a pathway to a state.”
What came as a surprise to many was a nominal commitment from Trump to look into resolving the civil war in Sudan, after he was briefed on the issue by Bin Salman, as he said. But what was even more intriguing was that Bin Salman delivered an Iranian message to Trump. This was not reported, but The Economist Deputy Editor Edward Carr revealed it in a podcast this week. What that message contained is not clear. Taking into consideration the Iranian keenness to negotiate with Trump on their nuclear programme, it was probably a positive message. In fact, Saudi Arabia has been in favour of settling the Iranian issue peacefully — contrary to the Israeli stand.
This emphasises the divergence between the Saudis and Israelis, suggesting Riyadh may not join the Abraham Accords after all. “It should be pointed out that whatever the Saudi government says, it would be highly unwise to start up a cosy normalised relationship (with Israel) like the UAE’s. The citizenry of the UAE doesn’t like it, but they are barely ten per cent of the total population so they don’t dare to speak up. That would not happen in Saudi Arabia. So again, what is announced at White House press conferences is not what will happen,” Hammond said.
Regardless of the details, the visit is the start of a new phase in Saudi-American relations framed by the Saudi media as a “sign of Saudi Arabia’s status as a global power”. Of course the Saudi media championed Bin Salman as “securing the kingdom’s prestige and putting its priorities on the US agenda”. Stavridis concluded his Bloomberg opinion by saying: “Beyond the glittering setting of the Oval Office and the tech-billionaire turnout at the evening soiree, the Crown Prince’s visit showed solid geopolitical interest at work. Now it is time to channel his personal lightning in productive ways: to Gaza, Iran, defence and energy markets.”
As the “mega” announcements settle, and the aura of the visit fades, practical steps in the coming months will reveal what has really been achieved.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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