Lavender carpets. Golden swords. Arabian horses. President Trump arrived in the Gulf to a royal welcome. Both sides seem delighted about what they’re getting out of one another. So what are they getting? And what will it mean for the future of the Middle East? We talk to Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, about this new era of chumminess between the American president and the Gulf leaders. What does it mean that President Trump has not brought up any of Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations? Is that luxury jet Qatar gifted him just norm breaking or illegal? And how might this friendship influence Trump in his dealings with Israel as its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, threatens to escalate attacks on Gaza?. -- Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at theAtlantic.com/listener. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the focus of Trump's visit to the Gulf States?
I'm Hussein Ibish, and I'm a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, and I write for many publications, especially The Atlantic.
This week, we're watching the president's visit to the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The pictures that we're referring to show Trump at the airport tarmac in Saudi Arabia being greeted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a royal welcome. Lavender carpets, golden swords, Arabian horses, and Trump is smiling through all of it.
This is a stark contrast to a few years ago when MBS, as bin Salman is known, was a pariah in the West for his human rights violations. So what does Donald Trump's new approach to the Gulf states mean for our Middle East policy? And why is Trump so at home there?
He lives in a world of patrons and clients. He lives in a world where Authority is not questionable. And that's very familiar. It's a very familiar space to especially the Saudi royals, but all of them. And he understands them and they understand him and he loves them and they love him. He can be himself, the unedited version. He doesn't have to check his instincts. He just go with it.
Chapter 2: How do Trump and the Gulf leaders perceive each other?
And that's kind of unusual for Trump.
The word that seems to summarize Trump's approach is transactional. That's the word that a lot of people use. So what are Middle East leaders getting from America and what is Trump getting from them?
Chapter 3: What is the transactional nature of US-Middle East relations?
Yeah, it's pretty straightforward, right? The Middle Eastern, not leaders, but countries, what they're getting ultimately is protection. They're getting military protection, which is often unsatisfactory from their point of view, But they don't really have a good alternative to the United States, so they have to try to work to make it as good as possible. And that's what they're doing.
They're buying goodwill from the US. They're also buying weapons, which they want and need. you know, purely just gifting. However, what Trump is getting in return is lots of money and more for himself than for the country. There is money coming for the country. There are these large weapons sales of missiles and other things to Saudi Arabia, the biggest weapons sale in U.S. history.
Chapter 4: How is Trump's business benefiting from his presidency?
And the UAE is looking at buying over a million semiconductor chips from NVIDIA. and so on. All three countries are buying lots of American stuff, which is a big boon to Trump's bid to revitalize American manufacturing. but there's also a grifting angle here, right? Trump is getting a lot of money for his own company. We've never seen this before.
We've never seen, even in the first Trump term, the level to which this state visit is also a private business visit is amazing because the projects include a Trump Tower in both Riyadh and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, another Trump Tower in Dubai in the UAE, and a Trump International Golf Course and Resort in Qatar.
There's also a cryptocurrency scheme connected to his sons in which a UAE-linked company has just agreed to invest $2 billion, with a B, $2 billion. The company is not going to look the same after this trip. It's going to go from being very successful for its size, mom-and-pop shop, built on the vast inheritance that Trump's had from his father, Fred. But now he's taking it into the stratosphere.
I mean, the amount of financial clout that's coming to his family-owned, privately held business is just amazing. And what the Arabs are doing here is buying goodwill. It's an investment. It's an investment in Trump as a friend. and, you know, ultimately also with the U.S. But right now, Trump has, you know, instituted l'État c'est moi. He is the country and the country is him.
And until somebody stops him or until he leaves the White House, that's the way it's going to be. And this is very understandable to a group of people who deal in patron-client relations as a matter of course.
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Chapter 5: What does the Qatar luxury jet symbolize in US diplomacy?
Okay, so just to summarize, the transaction is they get protection, and what Trump gets is money for the country and money for himself.
Exactly. They get protection, and he gets money, we get money.
Yeah, it's very clear when you describe it. The symbol, the concrete thing that is going to symbolize this trip for a long time is this luxury jet from Qatar. How should we understand what this transaction is?
Well, it's the absolute, I was waiting for you to bring it up, because it is exactly the kind of icon, the avatar of this trip. It says it all. Qatar, which is an unbelievably rich country, 300,000, maybe 400,000 citizens. Most of the country, between 2 and 3 million people, are expat laborers, foreign workers, Arab and Western technocrats.
But collectively, those 350,000 or so Qataris are the largest single exporter in the world of liquid natural gas. And obviously, all of the wealth goes to the citizens. I mean, it's just amazing. You've never seen a country with this level of per capita wealth. And it uses that money for national interest. In this case, what they've done is one of the former prime ministers, who is a royal,
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Chapter 6: Why do Gulf leaders prefer Trump's presidency?
has a jet, a luxury Boeing 747 that's kitted out, not for a president, but for a wealthy man who enjoys luxury travel on his own private plane. So what the Qataris have done is they've said, you can have the plane. for use as president while you're in office. And after that, it will be transferred to your presidential library, meaning he could still use it after that.
So it's sort of been... They've very cleverly muddied the waters or blurred the line between private and public here in order to give this plane to Donald Trump as an individual, and they can say... that they haven't, that they've given it to his presidency.
This is so interesting. Basically what you're saying is this is the president that the Gulf leaders have been waiting for. Trump is the man that they can finally deal with in the way that they want to.
Yeah, well, in a lot of ways, I think that's true. I remember a certain high-ranking, formerly very high-ranking Gulf individual who said just as much in 2016 after he was elected. They said he does the same things, and he listed a bunch of verbs that were unlawful actions and said, we do that and he does that. It's not obviously unlawful in their countries.
It's normative, but traditionally not allowed in the United States and in Western countries in general. And I think this man was absolutely correct when he said, we do this and he does that. We do this and he does that. And that they would feel very comfortable with him. They certainly would disagree about how much pressure he should put on Israel regarding Gaza. Things like that.
But I was thinking yesterday that there's really no daylight. between Trump's positions on all the really most important issues and those of Saudi Arabia. You can't find a major irritant there, which is really amazing. Such as what? What issues? Well, I mean, anything you think of.
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Chapter 7: What is the impact of Trump's disregard for human rights concerns?
The war in Ukraine, the nature of U.S.-Saudi relations, how business should be conducted, the Yemen war, talks with Iran, they both want a deal. They convinced him that lifting the sanctions on Syria was a good idea. They just agree more or less on just about any issue. And that can change overnight, because if there was a spike in oil prices, they would disagree right away.
But I was contrasting that in my mind with the problems that the US and Trump have with Israel right now, where there's disagreement about Gaza, about the ceasefire with the Houthis, about the talks with Iran. about the negotiations with Hamas. There are many irritants. Now, that's not to say the US is closer to Saudi Arabia than it is Israel. I don't think that's true.
The Israeli relationship with the US is very deeply ingrained and protected by political influence in the US, especially from evangelical Christians on the right. But yeah, I think Trump is sort of ideal in many ways from, say, a Saudi point of view.
Thank you.
So now that we've established this nature of this relationship and where we are now, I want to understand what it means to the rest of us, not to Trump and his family. Sure. So when you hear about U.S. relations with Gulf states in the past, especially Saudi Arabia, human rights enters as a factor. Not always forcefully, but it's always—
administrations, whether they're Republican or Democrat, they do bring it up. Trump doesn't.
Ever.
At all.
Right. So how important is that departure or shift?
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