Saudi crown prince arrives at White House
Mohammed bin Salman arrived at the White House to fanfare and a jet flyover moments ago, as he seeks to further rehabilitate his global image after the brutal 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and deepen ties with Washington.
Making his first White House visit in more than seven years, the crown prince was greeted with a lavish display of pomp and ceremony presided over by Donald Trump on the South Lawn, complete with a military honour guard, a cannon salute and a flyover by US warplanes.
Donald Trump greets the crown prince at the White House. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty ImagesDonald Trump and MBS. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/ReutersThe two leaders watch a military flyover on the South Lawn. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersDonald Trump guides Mohammed bin Salman into the White House. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/ReutersShare
Updated at 11.57 EST
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Bearing in mind that, while this is not a state visit – Mohammed bin Salman is not technically the Saudi head of state, though he is the kingdom’s de facto leader – that ceremony was definitely more lavish than your average state visit arrival, including the Marine band and officers on horseback flying the Saudi and US flags.
Donald Trump salutes the troops as he waits for the arrival of Mohammed bin Salman. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 12.24 EST
The two men have been speaking as they walk along the row of presidential portraits on the colonnade at the White House, which Trump recently unveiled as the “Presidential Walk of Fame”.
Donald Trump shows Mohammed bin Salman portraits of former presidents. Photograph: Evan Vucci/APTrump and MBS speak as they walk. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty ImagesTrump and bin Salman walk along the ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’. Photograph: Alex Brandon/APTrump is hosting the crown prince for meetings aimed at strengthening economic and defense ties. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 12.01 EST
Here are some more pictures capturing the pomp and circumstance Donald Trump has put on for MBS.
Donald Trump salutes as he waits for the arrival of Mohammed bin Salman. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/APFanfare for the crown prince’s welcome to the White House. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty ImagesA flyover of military aircraft on the South Lawn. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty ImagesShare
Updated at 12.03 EST
Saudi crown prince arrives at White House
Mohammed bin Salman arrived at the White House to fanfare and a jet flyover moments ago, as he seeks to further rehabilitate his global image after the brutal 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and deepen ties with Washington.
Making his first White House visit in more than seven years, the crown prince was greeted with a lavish display of pomp and ceremony presided over by Donald Trump on the South Lawn, complete with a military honour guard, a cannon salute and a flyover by US warplanes.
Donald Trump greets the crown prince at the White House. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty ImagesDonald Trump and MBS. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/ReutersThe two leaders watch a military flyover on the South Lawn. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersDonald Trump guides Mohammed bin Salman into the White House. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/ReutersShare
Updated at 11.57 EST
A reminder that Donald Trump’s family has a strong personal interest in Saudi Arabia. In September, London real estate developer Dar Global announced that it plans to launch Trump Plaza in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
It’s Dar Global’s second collaboration with the Trump Organization, the collection of companies controlled by the US president’s children, in the kingdom. Last year, the two companies announced the launch of Trump Tower Jeddah.
As Mohamad Bazzi wrote for The Guardian in October, the deals, announced a month after Trump was elected to a second term, won’t require the Trump family business to contribute funds toward building the towers, but they will earn millions of dollars in licensing fees.
Dar Global, a subsidiary of Dar Al Arkan, one of the largest real estate developers in Saudi Arabia, is privately owned, but it is dependent on contracts from the Saudi government and MBS’s favour, especially as he pursues an ambitious development plan called Vision 2030, intended to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil.
In recent years, Trump’s family business has also leaned on the LIV Golf League, which is funded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. After Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in January 2021, Trump-owned businesses lost a series of real estate and golf sponsorship deals. But Saudi leaders stuck by Trump, and agreed to hold the LIV professional golf tour at several of his US golf courses, providing millions of dollars in revenue while he was out of office.
Related: Trump’s Middle East trip isn’t just about diplomacy. It’s about the family business
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Interestingly, Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese footballer who is playing in the Saudi Pro League, is also expected to be at the White House on Tuesday during the crown prince’s visit, according to MS NOW.
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Trump to urge normalisation with Israel, while Saudis seek security pact
Former US negotiator in the Middle East Dennis Ross, who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, said Trump wants to develop a multifaceted relationship that keeps Saudi Arabia out of China’s sphere.
“President Trump believes all these steps bind the Saudis increasingly to us on a range of issues, ranging from security to the finance-AI-energy nexus. He wants them bound to us on these issues and not China,” Ross told Reuters.
Donald Trump and Mohammed bin Salman meeting delegations at the Royal Palace in Riyadh on 13 May. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP
Trump is expected to pressure MBS for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords and normalise relations with Israel, a major step the Saudis have been reluctant to take without a clear path to Palestinian statehood, a goal that has been forced to the backburner as the region grapples with the Gaza war.
Trump reached Abraham Accords agreements between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan during his first term in 2020. In recent weeks, Kazakhstan agreed to join. But Trump has always seen Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords as the linchpin to achieving a wider Middle East peace.
“It’s very important to him that they join the Abraham Accords during his term and so he has been hyping up the pressure on that,” a senior White House official told the news agency.
Jonathan Panikoff, former deputy national intelligence officer on the Middle East, said that while Trump will urge bin Salman to move toward normalising ties with Israel, any lack of progress there is unlikely to hinder reaching a new US-Saudi security pact.
“President Trump’s desire for investment into the US, which the crown prince previously promised, could help soften the ground for expanding defense ties even as the president is determined to advance Israeli-Saudi normalisation,” Panikoff, now at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, told Reuters.
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Updated at 11.20 EST
Saudi entourage for US visit may include official implicated in Twitter spy plot
Stephanie Kirchgaessner
A senior official in Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage, who is expected to travel with the crown prince on this first trip back to the US in seven years, has previously been accused by US prosecutors of playing a central role in a conspiracy to infiltrate Twitter and identify users who were posting critically about the Saudi regime.
Bader al-Asaker, who has headed Prince Mohammed’s private office since before he became crown prince, has never been formally charged by the US government for his role in the 2014-15 scheme, but was accused in court in 2022 by a US government lawyer as having led the campaign to find a “mole” who would be able to extract sensitive information from the social media company, which is now known as X.
The infiltration ultimately led to the forced disappearance of at least one Saudi man – Abdulrahman al-Sadhan – who was later sentenced to 20 years in jail for using a satirical and anonymous Twitter account to mock the Riyadh government.
The extraordinary campaign to send spies into the heart of a major US company was seen as a key example of how the Saudi state has been able to use a variety of methods to conduct transnational repression, silencing and intimidating critics of Prince Mohammed’s rule all over the world.
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Trump expects to build on a $600bn Saudi investment pledge made during his visit to the kingdom in May, which will include the announcement of dozens of targeted projects, a senior US administration official told Reuters.
The US and Saudi Arabia are expected to strike deals for defense sales, enhanced cooperation on civil nuclear energy and a multibillion-dollar investment in US artificial intelligence infrastructure, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Trump told reporters on Monday, “We’ll be selling” F-35 jets to Saudi, which has requested to buy 48 of the advanced aircraft.
As we noted earlier, this would be the first US sale of the fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and mark a significant policy shift. The deal could alter the military balance in the Middle East and test Washington’s definition of maintaining what the US has termed Israel’s “qualitative military edge.” Until now, Israel has been the only country in the Middle East to have the F-35.
Beyond military equipment, the Saudi leader is seeking new security guarantees. Most experts expect Trump to issue an executive order creating the kind of defense pact he recently gave to Qatar but still short of the congressionally ratified Nato-style treaty the Saudis initially sought.
Still, as Politico notes, “a major arms deal would signal a sea change in the US approach to Saudi Arabia: No longer would deeper ties between the two countries be so dependent on Saudi Arabia normalising relations with Israel.”
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Updated at 10.55 EST
Over the course of this day of White House diplomacy, MBS and Trump will hold talks in the Oval Office at 11.45am, have lunch in the Cabinet Room at 12.15pm and attend a formal black-tie dinner at 7.15pm, according to the US president’s schedule (timings are in ET).
Tomorrow the two leaders will jointly host an investment conference at the Kennedy Center. And invites have been sent out to US House leadership and committee leaders from both parties to meet with MBS tomorrow morning, Semafor reports.
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Updated at 10.50 EST
Per our earlier post, Donald Trump is set to host a glitzy two-day visit for crown prince Mohammed bin Salman starting in about an hour, with the Saudi de facto ruler seeking to further rehabilitate his global image after the 2018 killing of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi and deepen ties with Washington.
Jamal Khashoggi at a press conference in Manama, Bahrain, on 15 December 2014. Photograph: Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images
Making his first White House visit in more than seven years, the crown prince will be greeted with a lavish display of pomp and ceremony presided over by Trump.
Talks between the two leaders are expected to advance security ties, civil nuclear cooperation and multibillion-dollar business deals with the kingdom. But Reuters notes there will likely be no major breakthrough on Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel.
The meeting underscores a key relationship – between the world’s biggest economy and the top oil exporter – that Trump has made a high priority in his second term as the international uproar around the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi insider-turned-critic, has gradually faded.
US intelligence concluded that bin Salman approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The crown prince denied ordering the operation but acknowledged responsibility as the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
The warm welcome for bin Salman in Washington is the latest sign that relations have recovered from the deep strain caused by Khashoggi’s murder.
Related: US finds Saudi crown prince approved Khashoggi murder but does not sanction him
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Updated at 10.44 EST
UN security council votes to endorse Trump’s plan for international force in Gaza
Julian Borger
MBS’s visit to the US comes the day after the UN security council endorsed proposals put forward by Donald Trump for a lasting peace in Gaza, including the deployment of an international stabilisation force and a possible path to a sovereign Palestinian state.
The resolution, passed by a vote of 13-0 with abstentions by China and Russia, charted “a new course in the Middle East for Israelis and Palestinians and all the people of the region alike”, the US envoy to the UN, Mike Waltz, told the council chamber.
The inclusion of references to an independent Palestine was the price the US paid for backing from the Arab and Islamic world, including Saudi Arabia, who are expected to provide peacekeepers for an international stabilisation force (ISF).
Members of the UN Security Council raise their hands to vote in favour of a draft resolution to authorise an International Stabilization Force in Gaza, on 17 November. Photograph: Adam Gray/Getty Images
However, on the eve of the UN vote, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu restated his government’s adamant opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, raising questions on whether Israel will allow the implementation of the UN-mandated proposals.
After the vote, Hamas rejected what it described as as an imposed “international guardianship mechanism” and insisted it would not disarm.
Supporters of the resolution said it should lead to the immediate lifting of remaining curbs on the flow of aid into Gaza, the creation of an international stabilisation force which would fill the vacuum left by Israeli military withdrawal, and moves towards reconstruction and a possible “pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
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Updated at 10.59 EST
Oliver Holmes
Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House on Tuesday is expected to result in the sale of highly advanced US F-35 fighter jets to the Gulf monarchy.
The sale of the jets is significant as it would mark the first delivery of the advanced fighter jets to a Middle Eastern state apart from Israel. For years, the US has exclusively supplied Israel with advanced weapons to give the country an advantage against its neighbours.
A previous deal with the United Arab Emirates was also suspended, with concerns the technology could leak to China.
But the politics of the Middle East has changed this century, with Gulf monarchies shifting their focus to Iran, which Riyadh considers its chief regional foe. Trump mentioned the Israeli-US bombardment of Iran this summer when talking about his friendship with Saudi Arabia.
Still, some pro-Israel US Republicans are wary about upsetting the so-called “qualitative military edge” of Israel over its neighbours.
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Updated at 10.24 EST
Trump to welcome Saudi crown prince to White House with offer of F-35 fighter jets and business deals
US president Donald Trump will roll out the red carpet for Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, on Tuesday for a visit expected to advance the sale of F-35 fighter jets and a host of business deals with the kingdom.
It will be the first trip by bin Salman, widely known as MBS, to the US since the brutal 2018 killing of Saudi critic and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul, which triggered global outrage.
US intelligence concluded that MBS approved the capture or killing of Khashoggi. The crown prince denied ordering the operation but acknowledged responsibility as the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
During a day of White House diplomacy, MBS will hold talks with Trump in the Oval Office, have lunch in the Cabinet Room and attend a formal black-tie dinner in the evening.
Trump hopes to cash in on a $600bn Saudi investment pledge made during his visit to the kingdom in May. A senior White House official told Reuters that US-Saudi deals on technology, manufacturing, defence and more are expected.
Trump told reporters on Monday, “We’ll be selling” F-35s to Saudi, which has requested to buy 48 of the advanced aircraft.
Donald Trump and Mohammed Bin Salman shake hands at a welcoming ceremony in Riyadh on 13 May. Photograph: Bandar Algaloud/Courtesy of Saudi Royal Court/ReutersShare
Updated at 11.23 EST
