Trump’s Visit to the Gulf Was a Strategic Win for Saudi Arabia

Dr. Kristin Diwan, Arab Gulf States Institute

The Middle East is presently balanced on a knife's edge.  The United States is seeking a new nuclear agreement with Iran while threatening war; Israel has pledged to level every building in a new campaign to end Hamas and permanently occupy the Gaza strip unless all hostages are released; and until recently, both countries were bombing the Houthis in Yemen.  The United States and its key partner and regional stakeholder, Saudi Arabia, certainly had much to discuss when President Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met in Riyadh on May 13th.

Yet, President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, with subsequent stops in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, promised no diplomatic breakthroughs. The focus would be on commerce, not geopolitics, with previews of the agenda touting weapons sales, commercial investments, and expanding ties in strategic sectors such as artificial intelligence, mining, and civilian nuclear development. The Saudis hastily organized a Saudi-U.S. investment forum, a mini-Future Investment Initiative (FII), attended by leading Saudi officials and top technology and financial executives including Tesla's Elon Musk, Open AI's Sam Altman, and the chief executives of Blackstone, Citigroup, and Palantir.  The American's paved the way by Trump's issuance of an Executive Order, streamlining approval for weapons transfers and suggestion that constraints on the sharing of nuclear technology and advanced semiconductor exports will be eased.  These foreshadowed bilateral deals did indeed take place, improving U.S.-Gulf cooperation across multiple strategic future-oriented sectors, most significantly A.I.

Still, while President Trump came to Riyadh focused on US-Saudi bilateral ties and commercial deals, the Saudi leadership had wider ambitions. Saudi Vision 2030, and the expansion of global ties and investments necessary to achieve it, is the unrelenting focus of Mohammed bin Salman.  There is a clear understanding in Saudi Arabia and in fellow Gulf monarchies that economic growth cannot be sustained without regional stability. 

Stability, in turn, requires region-wide geopolitical advances, without which Gulf states lack the platform for impactful regional engagement. These moves must be initiated from the United States:  a new treaty agreement ending the prospect of a destabilizing regional war with Iran; a consequent de-escalation along the Red Sea; the lifting of American sanctions on Syria; and pressure towards a ceasefire in Gaza. This stability is the foundation on which the more commercially minded objectives can succeed.

It is for that reason that the Saudi leadership's unanticipated success in persuading the Trump Administration to meet with Syrian interim leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa and to lift U.S. sanctions on the country is perhaps the most promising outcome of President Trump's visit.  The benefits to a cash-strapped and boxed-in interim Syrian government are clear and immediate, including the corresponding lifting of sanctions by the European Union, the re-opening of the US ambassador's residence in Damascus, a $7 billion U.S-Qatar-Turkey energy deal to revitalize Syria's power grid, and an $800 million memorandum of understanding with the UAE-based DP World to rehabilitate Tartous port. The visit of the Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan following the Trump announcement, during which he prayed at the Umayyad mosque and introduced Saudi business elites to the country, heralded the promise of expanded Saudi ties.  A partnership with Qatar to assist paying Syrian public sector salaries began those positively.

The benefits to Saudi Arabia are less tangible but remain of great significance. It is Saudi leadership that unlocked this new opening, and it is the Saudi leadership that is winning the praise of much of the Arab and Islamic world. The Saudis are now free, working in coordination with others, to step into the strategic vacuum left by the multifront setbacks to Iran and its sub-state and militia allies across the Levant. This includes the ability to check, or to shape, Turkish power in the region.  There are new expectations that American backing of Israel's maximal aims in both Syria and Lebanon –– and perhaps even in the Palestinian territories –– has limits.  At a minimum, it provides some evidence that Saudi preferences can prevail in encouraging successful U.S. negotiations with Iran and in ending the war in Gaza.

Mohammed bin Salman is restructuring the Saudi economy, and reframing its identity and global orientation. The Trump visit yielded concrete support for both, through defense sales, plans for nuclear development, collaboration in technology, and an improved platform for regional engagement on its own terms.  But perhaps the biggest win was the concrete illustration of impactful Saudi leadership, that can work both with the American administration while delivering to the region. 

Dr. Kristin Smith Diwan is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute. Her current projects concern generational change, nationalism, and the evolution of Islamism in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Diwan received her PhD from Harvard University and holds an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.