U.S. President Donald Trump completed a four-day tour of the Middle East on May 13-16, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The trip was Trump’s first major international trip of his second term, although not his first movement outside U.S. borders, as he had recently attended the funeral of Pope Francis in Italy.
The trip, which focused on economic partnerships and seemed to give only secondary importance, or less, to a number of diplomatic and security negotiations underway, marked a significant, although clearly not momentous, juncture for the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
Presidential trips to the Middle East usually feature at least some public calls for authoritarian governments to improve their human rights efforts. But not on this trip, as Trump celebrated his business deals with Gulf royals and complemented their development successes. Trump’s decision to avoid human rights lectures and focus on business generated little but scorn from his American political opponents, as well as numerous European political figures and opinion leaders, whose prescriptions for their version of the Middle East interest neither Trump nor the Gulf regimes.
Trump was visibly enthusiastic throughout the trip as he secured significant investments, criticised his domestic political rivals and heaped praise on Gulf leaders who clearly know how to impress visiting world leaders with opulent palaces, fighter jet escorts, parades of camels and much more. The word “historic” was evoked more than a few times by Trump administration officials to describe the visit.
First stop – Riyadh
Saudi Arabia is hard at work rebranding itself as something much more than a key oil producer in the world, presenting the image of a country in transition and striving to diversify its economy. Riyadh is positioning itself as a mediator on the world scene and working to spur new non-extractive industries that will create millions of jobs for young Saudis. To do this, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS) is embarking on a significant social transformation that is liberalizing society, all while supporting the U.S. to maintain its longstanding role as regional security guarantor.
During the visit, Trump called the crown prince an “incredible man” and said he wants to strengthen the bilateral relationship. “It is more powerful than ever before — and by the way, it will remain that way. We don’t go in and out like other people,” Trump said. In one business conference speech, Trump argued that gains in the region come from within, noting, “The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities,” according to Western media reports.
Delivering the goods
Trump’s trip to Riyadh drew a phalanx of top U.S. corporate leaders, including Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX, the CEOs of AI companies like Palantir and OpenAI, chipmaker Nvidia, as well as Google, Coca-Cola, Boeing and other major U.S. weapons manufacturers, and included as well top asset management firms like Blackstone and BlackRock.
The Saudis had been tipped to be investing up to $600 billion in the U.S. over the next four years from the earliest days of the Trump administration.
The White House clarified some of those pledges during the visit, including:
$142 billion in arms deals from more than a dozen U.S. firms
$80 billion in technology investments from Google, Oracle, Salesforce, Uber and Saudi companies in both countries
$20 billion in AI data centers
$14 billion in gas turbines from GE
$14 billion in total to three sectoral funds for energy, defense and sports
$4.8 billion in Boeing planes
$2 billion in infrastructure services projects
Details on most of the deals remain hazy, as well as terms of any co-production agreements, but it is not unusual for these specifics to be worked out long after the “sugar high” of a presidential visit has faded, according to knowledgeable observers.
There was no public mention regarding oil production commitments or discussions but keeping the Saudi output at required levels for prices to hold steady or even decline is seen as an important lever to pressure Russia into peace negotiations with Ukraine and thus could constitute a significant Saudi contribution to U.S. global diplomatic efforts. But Saudi Arabia may have helped ensure the trip’s success by taking steps beforehand to help lower oil prices, right as President Trump was facing scrutiny over his tariff policies, according to Reuters.
What about the Abraham Accords?
Trump said it was his “fervent hope, wish — and even my dream” for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, long considered the top diplomatic achievement of his first term in office. “I really think it’s going to be something special. But you’ll do it in your own time and that’s what I want, that’s what you want, and that’s the way it’s going to be,” Trump said. Blocking such progress is widely seen as a key motivation for Hamas’ bloody October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
The Saudi crown prince also wants to start a civilian nuclear program with U.S. technology, and those discussions are reportedly moving ahead under Trump. That is an issue that had previously been tied to Saudi Arabia establishing relations with Israel, but Riyadh has long been clear that it would not move ahead with normalization as seen under the Accords without Israel stopping its war in Gaza and creating a pathway to Palestinian statehood.
Qatar – It’s mainly about the plane….
There were lots of financial agreements struck between the United States and Qatar, including Qatar’s state-backed airline buying as many as 210 new Boeing jets, and Qatar ordering billions in new U.S. arms, but Qatar’s gift to Trump of a 747 to replace the ageing Air Force One has been the subject that has gotten the most attention and drawn criticism — for different reasons – from MAGA, left and right.
Trump has called it a gift to the Defense Department (which he has ordered to take possession), but it is not a plane that would be left to the DoD after Trump leaves office. He said it would be decommissioned and then sent to his presidential library, which brings numerous questions about the emoluments clause of the U.S. constitution into play. There are already newly designed Air Force One jets that Boeing is building for delivery under a contract from the first Trump presidency, but no earlier than 2027-28, and possibly later, and Trump has been frustrated with these delays and constantly complains about flying around the globe in the 42-year-old presidential Boeing 747.
On top of questions about the substantial cost of security checks and refurbishments, Trump faces pushback for numerous reasons about the gift, but primarily for wanting to accept a $400 million plane (otherwise unsalable by the Qataris after repeated attempts, so this may be a case of Qatar successfully dumping a problematic aircraft) that he will later take control over, while his administration is urging tough austerity on other Americans.
The White House touted the U.S.-Qatar deals as generating an economic exchange worth at least $1.2 trillion (this is a new formulation with a calculation derived from data sets and methods as mysterious as the Trump tariffs were). Nevertheless, the Qatar agreement constitutes Boeing’s largest-ever widebody order and largest-ever 787 aircraft order. The White House claims the Qatar-Boeing agreement will support 154,000 U.S. jobs annually, totaling over one million jobs in the United States during the course of production and delivery of this deal, which is no small accomplishment.
On the defense side, Qatar committed to invest heavily in new U.S. drones and counter-drone capabilities, as well as signing a statement of intent to further strengthen the bilateral security partnership, outlining over $38 billion in potential investments including support for burden-sharing at Al Udeid Air Base and future defense capabilities related to air defense and maritime security.
The White House also announced a number of high value energy and infrastructure projects American companies have won, but it is unclear whether all of these are actually new initiatives or already ongoing.
United Arab Emirates – The digital future starts now
On the UAE stop on May 15, Trump announced over $200 billion in commercial deals between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, including a $14.5 billion Boeing sale to Etihad Airlines as well as UAE investments in U.S. minerals production and energy facilities. The White House announcements are however loosely worded and lacking in substantial details about some of these partnership arrangements.
While Trump visited Abu Dhabi, both countries announced plans to construct the largest AI data center outside the U.S. in Abu Dhabi. Trump’s AI czar, David Sacks, called the bilateral AI deal a “game-changer in the global AI race.” Sacks expanded, “The alternative to this framework was to exclude critical geo-strategic, resource-rich friends and allies from our AI ecosystem. This was the Biden policy, and it was foolish in the extreme.”
The U.S. and UAE signed an AI agreement that supports the $1.4 trillion investment commitment secured from the UAE in March. This includes the UAE committing to invest in, build, or finance U.S. data centers that are at least as large and as powerful as those in the UAE. The agreement also contains historic commitments by the UAE to further align their national security regulations with the United States, including strong protections to prevent the diversion of U.S. -origin technology, an issue that has security experts and Members of Congress extremely concerned, with China’s expanding links in the Gulf being the primary source of concern.
Syrian sanctions relief
At the beginning of his term, the Trump administration was not convinced about trusting Syria’s interim government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the onetime al-Qaida-affiliated insurgent. It appeared the Syrian president did not have the legitimacy to govern the country’s ethnically diverse population.
Armed skirmishes broke out in March, killing hundreds and targeting more members of the Alawite religious minority to which the ousted Syrian leader Basher Assad belongs. Those incidents gave the Trump White House pause about rapidly easing sanctions on Syria, some of which are decades old. But Trump signaled at the start of the trip that he was having a change of heart, perhaps under the influence of his Saudi hosts, and was moving toward lifting the Syria sanctions. A day later, he announced the move during an address to Gulf leaders.
Trump then took it farther ahead by agreeing to meet President Ahmed al-Sharaa before leaving Riyadh. Trump said he was impressed with al-Sharaa. The president called him a “young, attractive guy” with a “very strong past.”
The Trump decision on lifting sanctions sparked celebrations across a county where 90 percent of Syrians are said to be living in poverty, after more than a decade of civil war and profound suffering.
There were few other non-commercial surprises during the Trump trip.
While articles like “Trump’s Middle East trip produced little for the Palestinians” seem to dominate the American and European press, there was no serious in-depth discussion of Gaza, at least in public.
Trump did revisit his widely unpopular idea of the U.S. taking over the Gaza strip and making it a “freedom zone.” But it also seemed that Gulf leaders may have said something behind closed doors, because Trump noted, “We have to help also out the Palestinians. You know, a lot of people are starving in Gaza, so we have to look at both sides.” And it does appear that U.S. officials are increasingly concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, at least to the point of pressing Israel to begin allowing aid convoys to resume deliveries, now ongoing.
