Seven years after Saudi operatives assassinated and dismembered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi with a bone saw, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman received a lavish welcome from President Donald Trump at the White House today.
But as the White House aims to solidify and expand its partnership with Bin Salman, Trump — like multiple past presidents — may find that the Saudi royals often fail to deliver on their promises of aiding U.S. efforts in the Middle East.
The de facto Saudi ruler’s interest and ability to stabilize Gaza and the wider Middle East is far less than in the past.
“There’s no reason for Saudi to play a major role in Gaza,” said Daniel Levy, the president of the U.S. / Middle East Project who served as an Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. “They would not want to see themselves as lead candidates for deploying forces or taking on a managerial or economic role.”
That’s a notable shift for the kingdom. After Khashoggi’s 2018 killing — which Bin Salman has denied ordering, but for which, he has acknowledged responsibility as the kingdom’s leader — made MBS an international pariah, a failed Saudi military attempt to defeat Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen was harshly critcized for killing large numbers of civilians.
The 40-year-old has refocused his attention on reforming the kingdom’s economy while maintaining tight control of politics, which he is expected to rule for decades.
Now, “MBS’s focus is more about delivering domestically and on the economy,” said Levy.
And in that sense, he may find an eager partner in Washington: The biggest winners of the visit may not be U.S. national interests, but instead U.S. businesses with close ties to Trump — as well as Trump family businesses.
“What is striking to me is the conflation of the American national interest with Trump’s personal interest,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who worked on Middle East policy in four previous American administrations. “No American president would ever behave in the way Trump has.”
In September, Saudi officials overseen by Bin Salman included Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in a $55 billion deal to acquire video game maker Electronic Arts. And Trump’s sons, Donald and Eric, are reportedly close to finalizing a deal that would see the Trump family business join a new $63 billion Saudi government real estate project in Riyadh.
Administration officials are celebrating the ratification by the U.N. Security Council of Trump’s 20-point plan to bring peace to Gaza. But experts say that Bin Salman is unlikely to agree right now to Trump’s long-term goal of normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
For decades, Saudi Arabia has failed to deliver on helping solve U.S. national security challenges in the Middle East. In the 1980s, Saudi intelligence operatives played a central role in helping the CIA arm Mujahideen fighters who fought Soviet forces after they invaded Afghanistan.
After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, the Saudis promised to help curtail the more extreme jihadis who then focused on targeting the U.S., including Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national. After the 9/11 attacks, Saudi officials pledged to help endthe Taliban insurgency against U.S. forces. The 20-year U.S. effort ended in humiliation with the fall of Kabul in 2021.
After Bin Salman rose to power several years ago, he launched a military campaign in Yemen where Saudi forces tried to use advanced American military equipment, particularly aircraft. The effort resulted in a vast humanitarian crisis, large numbers of civilian casualties and harsh criticism of bin Salman.
A former senior foreign service officer who served in the region said that the experiences changed the de facto ruler’s sense of what Riyadh can achieve in the region.
“They don’t have the same kind of regional ambitions to fix problems,” said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation from the Trump administration. “He’s not interested in fixing things. He’s more interested in keeping things at bay.”
Miller predicted that Bin Salman would relish his visit to the White House and make economic deals with Trump, and said that Trump will turn a blind eye to the Saudi government’s political repression. For Trump, there’s the allure of Saudi economic investment in the U.S. And for Bin Salman, there’s the promise of resisting being drawn into Saudi Arabia playing a direct role in Gaza. Trump has limited leverage with Bin Salman; like his predecessors, Bin Salman can simply wait out the president’s remaining years in power.
“This guy is going to see five to six U.S. presidents,” Miller said. “I don’t know how willing he is going to be to help the U.S. in Gaza or the region.”
David Rohde
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MSNBC. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News, editing stories about national security and law enforcement and writing stories about the Justice Department and FBI. He is the author of five books, most recently, "Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI and the War on Democracy." Experience Before joining NBC News, I worked as an executive editor of The New Yorker website and as a foreign correspondent, investigative reporter and columnist for Reuters, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor. I have reported on the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, State Department and the New York City court system. I covered the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Bosnia. Awards Pulitzer, Polk, Overseas Press Club and Livingston