Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de facto chief executive of Saudi Arabia, is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
It is the first trip MBS has made to the United States since 2018, when the killing of writer Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives in Istanbul caused a diplomatic rift with the Western world.
Khashoggi, a native of Saudi Arabia and longtime critic of the monarchy based in the United States and employed by the Washington Post, was lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, with the promise of a document he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée. He was killed by agents of the Saudi government, who dismembered his body and sought to dispose of the evidence.
The Khashoggi killing became a massive international scandal with repercussions that would last for years. The Saudi government contended that rogue operatives killed him, possibly by accident while attempting to restrain him and bring him back to Saudi Arabia to face sedition charges. Several top officials were fired and 11 individuals were put on trial for the murder. The investigation cleared MBS of any involvement with Khashoggi’s killing.
Critics claimed the Saudi investigation was a complete whitewash and castigated Western leaders for not doing enough to hold the Saudis accountable. The Turkish government remains furious over the killing on its soil.
President Joe Biden campaigned on turning MBS into a global “pariah” for his suspected role in the Khashoggi assassination, but soon changed his tune as the U.S. economy cratered on his watch. Biden wound up pleading with the Saudis to increase oil production, but Riyadh did not seem inclined to forget his “pariah” bluster.
When the Biden administration released an intelligence report on the Khashoggi killing in 2021, it claimed MBS authorized the murder, but stopped short of recommending any action against him. The report also took a light touch with the grisly details of Khashoggi’s killing, such as the inept use of a bone saw to dismember his corpse.
“The administration concluded it could not risk a full rupture of its relationship with the kingdom, relied on by the United States to help contain Iran, to counter terrorist groups and to broker peaceful relations with Israel. Cutting off Saudi Arabia could also push its leaders toward China,” the leftist New York Times glumly reported in February 2021.
A “reset” in relations with Saudi Arabia has been in the works since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025. Trump received an energetic welcome when he visited Saudi Arabia in May, including promises of $600 billion in U.S. investments from MBS.
“I’ll be asking the crown prince, who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to a round one trillion. I think they’ll do that because we’ve been very good to them,” Trump responded.
The Saudis were ostentatiously delighted to roll out the red carpet for a president who was not Joe Biden, but now MBS will face expectations to make good on his May promises when he meets with Trump in the White House. Some big Saudi investments have been made in the United States this year, but they still have a long way to go before they hit $600 billion, or one trillion.
The National reported on Sunday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Yasir al-Rumayyan, head of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), last week to develop a strategy for more investments in the United States. One detail that needed to be worked out was the decline of oil prices this year, which has cut into Riyadh’s budget.
“This world of urgent economic development and job creation has come at the same time as lower oil prices and stagnant oil revenues. The financial math around the pledges to invest in the United States or to invest new money in the United States doesn’t add up to me,” Ziemba Insights founder Rachel Ziemba told The National.
The Saudis want a great deal from the United States, including technology transfers, nuclear power, arms deals, and possibly a mutual defense treaty, which will probably have trouble getting through Congress unless the Saudis scale back their expectations a little.
MBS has something he could trade for these concessions that might be even more valuable to the Trump administration than billions of investment dollars, but he will be very reluctant to offer it: normalizing relations with Israel and joining the Abraham Accords.
Reuters on Monday quoted analysts who predicted MBS would only make a move toward joining the Abraham Accords if Israel makes a concession it would be even more reluctant to grant: Palestinian statehood.
“Our opposition to a Palestinian state in any territory has not changed. Gaza will be demilitarized and Hamas will be disarmed, the easy way or the hard way. I do not need affirmations, tweets or lectures from anyone,” Netanyahu said on Sunday, rejecting pressure from both home and abroad.
The Israeli leader is facing demands from the Israeli right to firmly reject the vague promise of a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” in President Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich criticized Netanyahu Saturday for not consistently and decisively making it “clear to the entire world” that “a Palestinian state will never arise on the lands of our homeland.”
“Two months have passed in which you have chosen silence and political disgrace,” Smotrich told Netanyahu.
The Jerusalem Post said Israeli politicians were on pins and needles in anticipation of the Trump-MBS meeting, as Trump enjoys unprecedented popularity in Israel at the moment, and MBS is certainly aware of it. Trump also has tremendous sway with MBS, who is the “one person who can make” normalization with Israel happen. It seems likely that something of substance will happen at the White House on Tuesday, but no one is exactly certain what it will be.
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