The atrocious murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 was a “huge mistake”, “very painful”, as the Crown Prince of , Mohamed bin Salmán, admitted this Tuesday, in response to a journalist’s question during a meeting with Donald Trump, in the Oval Office. The American president, for his part, had angrily scolded the reporter for “putting his guest in an embarrassing situation.” “Things happen. He didn’t know anything, let’s leave it at that,” he had stated.
The meeting between the two leaders, the highlight of the Saudi official visit to Washington, has been very fruitful. Trump has confirmed that both countries have agreed on a defense agreement by which the North American country will give security guarantees to its ally. Bin Salmán has announced that he will increase the Saudi investment commitment in the United States to one trillion dollars, which six months ago he had placed at 600,000 million dollars (518,000 million euros).
The purpose of the visit was precisely to boost the bilateral relationship and definitively close the tensions over the brutal murder of Khashoggi. The journalist lived in the United States and traveled to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to process some documents. There, according to the United States secret services, Saudi agents were waiting for him there, who strangled him on the orders of Bin Salmán himself and dismembered his body to secretly remove it from the building.
Trump summarized that episode in his response on Tuesday as “things happen.” The president urged to “leave behind” an issue that “leaves Bin Salmán in an embarrassing situation.” “He didn’t know anything, and we can leave it at that,” he said to defend his guest. Previously, he had praised his “human rights record.”
The defense and economic agreements agreed between the two leaders and confirmed at the meeting could change the military balance in the Middle East, where until now Israel has been the main recipient of the most modern American weapons.
Trump had announced a day before the meeting that he will approve the sale to Saudi Arabia of F-35 stealth fighter planes, the most modern that the United States has and which cost one hundred million dollars per unit. Having them was one of the kingdom’s long-standing ambitions, but until now Washington had resisted selling them to them.
One of the reasons for this refusal was the fear that this technology, among the most classified available to the Pentagon, could end up in the hands of rivals such as China, with which Riyadh has excellent relations. The other big reason was the opposition of Israel, Washington’s great military ally in the area and which does have access to these aircraft and fears that the sale to Saudi Arabia could neutralize, at least in part, its strategic advantage in the region. The F-35s played an important role in the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities last June.
Trump had made clear in recent days the importance he attached to this visit by one of his favorite world leaders, in whose country his family’s company, the Trump Organization, maintains significant business.
Bin Salmán was what is usually reserved for kings or presidents on a state visit: red carpet, salute with cannon salutes, flyover of war planes in formation (three F-35s and three F-16s) and joint inspection of troops in the gardens of the presidential residence, while a military band played the respective national anthems.
Later, on the way to the Oval Office, Trump offered his guest a personalized tour of one of the creations with which he has imposed his aesthetic stamp on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: his “presidential walk of fame”, the gallery of portraits of his predecessors in the White House, where his immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, is represented with a photo of an automatic signing machine.
In the afternoon/evening, an honorary reception and a gala dinner were planned to which hundreds of personalities from the worlds of business, politics, culture and the armed forces were invited.
Despite the entertainment, it is unlikely that the negotiations these days will lead to significant progress on the main issue of interest to Trump. The American president, who very consciously decided that in this his second term, aspires for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords for normalization between Israel and Muslim countries.
The Republican, who considers these pacts to be the great foreign policy achievement of his first term, is trying to give them new impetus – the White House has announced the signing with Kazakhstan and Indonesia – and the addition of Riyadh, the great economic engine of the Middle East and custodian of the Muslim holy places, would be the grand finale.
However, Riyadh is in no rush to sign these pacts. He conditions his yes on the establishment of a roadmap for the creation of a Palestinian State, which does not appear in the peace agreement for Gaza proposed by the Trump Administration, while Israel is strictly opposed to any step in that direction, no matter how minimal.
UN resolution 2803, approved this Monday, enshrines this 20-point plan as international law. Its text declares that “the conditions for a credible path to self-determination and a Palestinian state can finally be met” once the Palestinian Authority has completed a reform program and the reconstruction of Gaza is advanced.
“The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence,” that resolution also adds.
Bin Salmán, for his part, also aspired to achieve security guarantees for his country, access to artificial intelligence technology and, perhaps, progress in US support for a civil nuclear energy development program during his talks in Washington. Both leaders also planned to discuss the commitment that Saudi Arabia made last May, during Trump’s visit, for the . Another field of mutual interest in the economic field is collaboration on rare earths and critical minerals.
Riad wants, another of the great Arab allies of this Republican Administration, last September. Then, Trump signed an executive order that guarantees the emirate that the United States will come to its defense if it is attacked by a third country, in a commitment similar to that offered by Article 5 of NATO.
For years, Saudi Arabia sought a defense treaty with the United States that would be ratified by Congress in Washington — the highest possible level for a bilateral pact. Riyadh demanded this step as part of the concessions it demanded to sign the Abraham Accords and thus reinforce Washington’s network of alliances in the region against Iran.
But the outbreak of war in Gaza, and related developments in the region, have changed the calculations. The US attack on nuclear targets in Iran last June represented the final blow, following Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and American attacks on Houthi militias in Yemen, to leave Tehran and the radical groups backed by that country weaker than at any time in decades.
Washington conditions a treaty on Riyadh agreeing to join the Abraham Accords, and Saudi Arabia seems to settle, for the moment, with a solution similar to that of the Qatar case: a written declaration of support, but which, without the support of Congress, would not have the same legal guarantees.
