In Washington, MBS Is Focused on Normalization—but Not With Israel

In February 1945, an ailing President Franklin Roosevelt returning from the Yalta Conference went out of his way to meet with Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, founder of the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia, at the Great Bitter Lake along the Suez Canal. FDR may have been the first U.S. president to be enamored by Saudi royalty, compelled by its oil reserves or taken with its purported leadership in the Arab world—but he wouldn’t be the last. Six of his successors would host Saudi kings in Washington. But perhaps no president’s relationship with a Saudi leader would be more consequential or worrisome than Donald Trump’s with Mohammed bin Salman, the forty-year-old crown prince who Trump will host in Washington this week for economic and security discussions, including a bilateral security pact and normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. 

Like his predecessors, Trump is besotted by Saudi Arabia. But he also is comfortable with its authoritarians, oblivious to its terrible human rights record, compelled by the financial opportunities there, and driven by the desire for an Israeli-Saudi deal that could offer him a chance at the Nobel Peace Prize. During the Washington meetings, Trump won’t press MBS on human rights nor expect too much on normalization. Trump should understand that for MBS, this visit isn’t about normalization with Israel; it’s about normalizing his reputation as a serious international leader and valued U.S. partner.

For more than seventy years, strong relations with Saudi Arabia have been a strategic pillar of U.S. Middle East policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Oil, counterterrorism, intelligence cooperation, Gulf security, and pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace would seem to argue strongly in favor of such a designation. At the same time, major areas of disagreement have caused longstanding tensions—including divisions over oil pricing, nuclear enrichment, human rights, relations with Russia and China, and the conflict in Yemen. 

If an ally in the broadest sense is a country that enjoys a high coincidence of interests and values with the United States and a strong base of domestic support that results from that perception, Saudi Arabia might be seen as falling short. Far more accurate would be to consider Riyadh as a strategic partner, whose interests align episodically with Washington. This is important to keep in mind as the United States considers which commitments to make in a possible bilateral security pact. 

MBS is focused not just on the United States. While hoping to clinch a security deal with Washington, he has also reached out to other powers large and small to broaden his options. He has developed close relations with Russia and China on hydrocarbons, oil, and technology—and sought détente with Iran to create a secure environment in the Gulf for his economic plans.

This hedging is due in part to MBS’s view of American policy as inconsistent and dysfunctional—including Washington’s shifting priorities during Barack Obama’s administration, former president Joe Biden’s initial hostility toward the crown prince after the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord, and Trump’s tepid response to the 2019 Iranian strikes on Saudi oil facilities. MBS won’t give up his relationships with Russia or China or become the tip of an American or Israeli spear against Iran. He won’t sacrifice Saudi Arabia’s strategic autonomy and will resist choosing sides if pressed for clean breaks. U.S. policymakers eager to wean the crown prince away from American adversaries should bear this temporal reality in mind as they deal with him.

What MBS reportedly wants is a Senate-ratified defense commitment along the lines of a NATO Article 5 pledge. The last time Washington delivered that was sixty-five years ago, with the 1960 U.S.-Japan treaty. The arguments for such a commitment may seem compelling: Saudi Arabia has real enemies that pose significant threats, the United States went to war to protect Saudi and Gulf oil before, a defense pact might prove to be a deterrent to future predators, and it would lock Saudi Arabia into a pro-American alignment for years to come, boxing out our competitors Russia and especially China. 

But Washington should be wary of delivering that sort of binding commitment to any country, but especially to Saudi Arabia. And it should be asking itself: What is the critical threat to Saudi that requires a formal defense commitment? If there is a threat, it might well come from subversive activities at home in response to the regime’s repressive and authoritarian policies. Would Washington really want to involve itself in that kind of conflict?

The United States should also take the China threat in proportion. Beijing can’t replace Washington as Riyadh’s security partner in the region. And U.S. interests and priorities will change over time. A long-term defense pact with a problematic partner playing footsie with China and Russia could outlive its raison d’être. Through an executive order, Trump gave Qatar a security pledge that’s stunningly robust. Perhaps that kind of commitment is the best possible outcome, given the administration’s enthusiasm for Saudi Arabia.

As for Israel-Saudi normalization—I have worked on Arab-Israeli negotiations for most of my professional life, so I have little doubt it would be a big deal—how transformative it could be is open for debate. That would depend on whether the deal would create not just regional integration between Israel and the Arab and Muslim world, but would become a vehicle for delivering a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The question is what, if anything, the United States would pay for such a deal. My sense is very little. In the wake of October 7, the Saudi price for normalization with Israel has gone up, and MBS may well have convinced himself that formalizing his already deep security and intelligence cooperation with Israel is neither feasible nor desirable at the moment. But MBS must continue to play the normalization card with Trump. And if Trump’s price was right, including a substantial commitment to Palestinian statehood, MBS just might go for it. But MBS’s goal on this trip is to get as much as he can from Trump without making any serious public commitments on normalization. The more Trump gives to the Saudis—a security commitment, F-35s, a pledge to export U.S. nuclear technology and sophisticated semi-conductors—the less incentive he’ll have for moving forward on normalization. 

For MBS, this visit may well be focused on trying to do another kind of normalization—not with Israel, but with the United States. He may want to demonstrate that since his last visit in 2018, he has come in from the cold and is fully rehabilitated, with Khashoggi’s murder and Saudi Arabia’s horrible human rights record now in the rear-view mirror. And as the president and crown prince sit down for a black-tie dinner in the East Room on Tuesday night, surrounded by all the trappings of a state visit, there’s no doubt—at least for Trump—that MBS has succeeded.