Middle East Triumph: Trump Makes Biggest Deal Ever With Saudi Kingdom

The United States and Saudi Arabia signed a $142 billion arms deal that the White House calls “the largest arms deal in history,” at the first stop of Donald Trump’s four-day diplomatic tour of the Persian Gulf aimed at sealing major deals and showcasing the benefits of Trump’s foreign policy.

During the trip, the White House also confirmed that Trump would meet with Syria's new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former jihadist militant commander whose forces helped oust Bashar al-Assad in 2024. The informal meeting would be the first face-to-face meeting between a US president and a Syrian leader since 2000, when Bill Clinton met the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad in Geneva, The Guardian reports.

Speaking at an investment forum on Tuesday, Trump said he planned to lift sanctions on Syria after holding talks with Saudi Arabian President Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “I will order the sanctions on Syria to be lifted so they can have a chance at greatness,” Trump said.

Jihadist al-Sharaa, who was trying to gain favor with the US president, offered access to Syrian oil, contracts for the reconstruction and construction of the Trump Tower in Damascus in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions against Syria.

While the details of the sanctions relief remain unclear, Sharaa's team in Damascus was celebrating a victory.

“It’s amazing, it worked,” said Radwan Ziadeh, a Syrian writer and activist close to the Syrian president. He shared a photo of the initial design of the Trump Tower in Damascus. “This is how you win his heart and mind,” he said, noting that Sharaa would likely show Trump the design when they met in Riyadh on Wednesday.

Trump’s visit was largely focused on business interests and securing quick wins. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed pledged to invest $600 billion in the United States during a lunch with Trump, including $20 billion in artificial intelligence data centers, $14.2 billion in gas turbines and other energy equipment, nearly $5 billion in Boeing 737-8 jets and other deals.

But the details of specific commitments remained vague, the figures announced by the White House did not exceed $600 billion, and some programs were started under the Biden administration, The Guardian notes.

The White House called the arms deal “the largest arms sales agreement in history” and said it included plans by more than a dozen U.S. defense companies to sell weapons, equipment and services in the areas of air power and space capabilities, air and missile defense, and border and maritime security.

The US president was greeted by royal guards when he arrived in Riyadh on Tuesday. Royal Saudi Air Force F-15 fighter jets escorted Trump’s Air Force One as the presidential jet arrived in Riyadh, and Trump sat with Salman in the ornate Royal Court Room at Al-Yamamah Palace with members of the US and Saudi business elite. They included Elon Musk, prominent figures in artificial intelligence such as Sam Altman, and the heads of IBM, BlackRock, Citigroup, Palantir and Nvidia, among others.

When Salman promised that Saudi Arabia would invest $600 billion in the US economy, Trump smiled and joked that the investment should amount to $1 trillion.

The trip is part of a reshaping of Middle East policy dominated by Trump's "America First" platform, which puts domestic economic and US security interests above foreign alliances and international law, The Guardian reports. Critics have said the deal-making empowers Trump and a group of businessmen around the president, and the US president's family has business interests in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, creating an unprecedented conflict of interest for the current administration.

The most striking example of the new commercialization of American foreign policy under Trump has been the purported gift from Qatar's ruling family of a luxury Boeing 747-8 jet that the White House has said could be converted into a presidential plane and then given to Trump's presidential library after he leaves office.

The gift drew the ire of Democrats in Congress, one of whom called it an "air palace" and said it would be "the most valuable gift ever given to a president by a foreign government."

Trump defended the proposal, saying in a tweet that the jet would “replace the 40-year-old presidential jet, Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent deal,” and called Democrats calling for an ethics investigation “world class losers!!!”

Trump and Salman's meeting was marked by smiles and friendly slaps on the back, in stark contrast to previous summits when the Saudi leader was embroiled in controversy over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, The Guardian reports.

While his administration touted the big deals, Trump also acknowledged that achieving his geopolitical goals of Saudi Arabia's diplomatic recognition of Israel would take time, in large part because Israel is waging war in Gaza.

“It will be a special day in the Middle East, with the whole world watching, when Saudi Arabia joins us,” he said of the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration’s framework for Arab states to recognize Israel. “And I do think it will be something special, but you will do it in your own time.”

Trump is also due to visit the United Arab Emirates on Thursday before heading to Qatar this week.

His talks in the region were characterized by major investment deals, which also appear to have played a role in changing US policy toward Syria.

Syrian President Al-Sharaa, who is seeking normalization of relations with the US, has reportedly offered Trump a number of sweeteners, including a Trump Tower in Damascus, a demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights that would strengthen Israel's claims to the territory it has occupied since 1967, diplomatic recognition of Israel and a profit-sharing agreement on resources similar to the Ukrainian natural resources deal.

The idea to offer Trump a piece of property with his name in central Damascus came from a Republican US senator who passed the idea on to Sharaa's team.

The trip, The Guardian notes, is also unusual because of Trump's decision not to visit Israel, the US's closest ally in the region, because of the war in Gaza and Trump's tense relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas released the last remaining American hostage, Edan Alexander, on the eve of Trump's visit to the Middle East in an attempt to push Trump to pressure Netanyahu to end the war.

In a show of defiance, Netanyahu doubled down on the military effort Tuesday, saying any cease-fire would only be “temporary.” “In the coming days, we will deploy all our forces to complete the operation to defeat Hamas,” he said. “Our troops are already there.” “There will be no situation where we stop the war,” the Israeli prime minister added.