MBS arrives at White House as Trump rehabilitates Saudi ties
WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump received Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, marking the Gulf leader’s return to Washington after a seven-year hiatus marked by a nadir in ties between the two sides.
Prince Mohammed’s arrival marked the next step in the Trump administration’s effort to realign his oil-rich monarchy with Washington after years of engaging with China — the US’s main global rival — on strategic business and technology development.
The visit by the Saudi crown prince had all the showy trappings of a formal visit by a foreign head of state, complete with US Army flag bearers on horseback and an overflight by a squadron of US Air Force fighter jets, even though Prince Mohammed’s father, King Salman, remains the monarch.
A Trump administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bilateral meeting was expected to produce an announcement of new Saudi investments in US artificial intelligence infrastructure worth billions of dollars. The meeting would also coincide with an announcement of US defense sales to the kingdom, the official said, along with “enhanced cooperation on civil nuclear energy” for Riyadh.
On Monday, Trump confirmed that his administration plans to sell to Saudi Arabia Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which — if authorized by Congress — could further tilt the strategic balance of the Middle East toward the US and its allies.
Iran remains militarily weakened by a surprise Israeli air offensive in June, coordinated with US long-range bombing, which disabled three of the Islamic Republic’s key nuclear facilities.
The combined attacks left Iran without an effective air defense umbrella, decimated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s high command and damaged its ballistic missile production capabilities. That, combined with acute economic woes worsened by the anticipated effects of recently reapplied US and international economic sanctions, has given the Saudi crown prince a boost in the region’s power balance.
At the same time, the Trump administration is seeking to rehabilitate Prince Mohammed’s image on the international stage after the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Top among the deliverables sought by the prince during his visit is greater access to US-made artificial intelligence technology, as his kingdom seeks to diversify its economy away from dependency on petroleum exports in the coming decades.
The Trump administration greenlit a partnership between US-based chipmaker NVIDIA and a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund to build several “AI factories” in the kingdom in the coming years.
During his first planned state visit abroad of his second term in May, Trump visited Saudi Arabia and announced that the kingdom had pledged a total of $600 billion in future investment in the United States.
Additional Saudi investments in line with that pledge are expected out of the White House meeting on Tuesday, the senior administration official said, without offering details.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
