Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Is Set to Visit Washington. Here’s What to Expect Out of His Meeting with Trump

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) will make an official working visit to the White House on Tuesday, November 18. It will be his first trip to Washington since March 2018.  

The period between his two visits has been bumpy. MBS seeks to solidify and extend a recent positive period, building on a strong personal relationship with US President Donald Trump, deep commercial ties between members of each country’s leadership, and Trump’s successful trip to the Kingdom in May. The connection between the two countries and the two men will prove critical this visit, as they will confront a wide-ranging agenda requiring considerable attention and diplomatic finesse.  

There will be no shortage of topics for the two leaders to discuss during the meeting. New commercial and defense ties are likely to receive significant attention, particularly in the realms of artificial intelligence and growing regional data centers. Trickier for the two sides will be managing bigger ticket items—such as the purchase of F-35s and the development of nuclear power. Larger regional questions loom large about Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Israel, Turkey, and Qatar that will shape the future of Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, and beyond.  

What’s on the agenda? 

Key priority areas for the Saudis include broadening and deepening commercial ties, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence, data technology, energy, and defense.  

State visits usually result in announcements of new agreements or memoranda of understanding, and this trip will likely prove no different. But such trips can also highlight where sides remain further apart. Human rights, a perennial stumbling block in US-Saudi relations, are unlikely to receive significant attention. 

The Saudis have been working assiduously to lower expectations that they will join the Abraham Accords—a stated goal of the Trump administration that would require normalizing relations with Israel—until the White House articulates a clearer vision for the future of Gaza and the West Bank. The two sides will thus need to work through how much is possible without attaining this loftier goal.  

What is behind the visit? 

When MBS last arrived in Washington to meet with Trump, he had only recently assumed his role as crown prince, supplanting his uncle, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. He was not yet halfway through a controversial 15-month purge of business leaders, officials, and members of the royal family that would eventually solidify his rule.  

Just seven months after his March 2018 visit, MBS was implicated in the grotesque and brazen assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a murder that brought international opprobrium. The growing humanitarian disaster in Yemen resulting from intense Saudi armed intervention was further galvanizing public outcry in the United States and abroad. Although the Trump administration tried to downplay both crises, Congress and the American public remained cautious of US-Saudi ties.  

In September 2019, as the conflict in Yemen escalated, Iranian missiles and drones successfully targeted Abqaiq and Khurais, two major Saudi oil facilities, taking out 50 percent of Saudi oil production for about two weeks. Although the Trump administration responded by bolstering America’s military troop presence in the Kingdom and reimposing select sanctions on Iran, Riyadh wanted a more visible show of force. Washington's perceived tepid response left many in Riyadh openly questioning US commitment to the desert kingdom. 

The following September, just four months before leaving office, the Trump administration heralded in the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Saudi Arabia remained on the sidelines.  

The newly installed Biden administration inherited a bruised US-Saudi relationship. President Joe Biden met with MBS in July 2022, taking significant heat for doing so in light of the Khashoggi assassination. The administration pushed hard for the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and seemed to be on the brink of achieving a breakthrough when Hamas launched its October 7, 2023, attack against Israel, in part to derail that progress. The brutality and the duration of the fighting in Gaza deferred further reconciliation. 

The return of the Trump administration in January 2025 provided an opportunity to reset and strengthen relations more generally. In May, building on strong commercial ties forged between Trump administration associates and their Saudi counterparts during the Biden years, Trump traveled to Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, ushering in a raft of new defense and technology deals, particularly in the areas of data center technologies and artificial intelligence.  

Although Gaza continued to strain relations between Washington and Riyadh, Israel’s attacks on Iranian proxies throughout the region, along with the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, helped weaken Saudi Arabia’s key regional adversary.  

MBS thus returns to Washington at a warm point in US-Saudi relations and amid a geopolitically reshaped Middle East that has tilted in Saudi Arabia’s favor. While he will seek to build on the economic and defense agreements established during Trump’s May visit, both Washington and Riyadh will be exploring what might be possible geopolitically, and leaders around the world will be watching very closely. The US public will likely treat any statements skeptically. In a June 2025 Chicago Council on Global Affairs/Ipsos survey, only 30 percent of Americans said they believe Saudi Arabia is playing a positive role in resolving the key problems facing the Middle East.  

What does Saudi Arabia hope to get out of it? 

Visits such as these usually result in new agreements, and we should expect to see many penned under the media spotlight. The focus of the announcements will most likely center on a robust AI future that is emerging in the Gulf in particular. Saudi Arabia has made investing in data centers and digital infrastructure a key aspect of its “Saudi Vision 2030” economic development plan and is investing $21 billion in data centers alone. Riyadh is investing even more in data-intensive industries, such as electric vehicles and advanced manufacturing, as well as in AI and space exploration.  

While gas and oil remain Saudi Arabia’s comparative advantage in generating growth, Riyadh is investing in renewables and has become one of the fastest-growing markets for solar power. Concurrently, the country has continued to push for a civilian nuclear program as the high energy demand of new AI data centers prompts a global revival in nuclear power.  Riyadh has long expressed interest in developing its own nuclear program, which the Biden administration entertained as a sweetener to Saudi-Israeli normalization. 

During Trump’s May trip to the region, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia’s energy minister on civil nuclear energy, including safety, security, and nonproliferation programs; vocational training and workforce development; US Generation III+ advanced large reactor technologies and small modular reactors; uranium exploration, mining, and milling; and safe and secure nuclear waste disposal. While Wright has discussed nuclear power within a global arms control framework, the Trump administration has generally been skeptical—if not downright dismissive—of arms control more broadly. It remains to be seen if the Trump administration will continue to tie Saudi Arabia’s desire for a nuclear program to normalization with Israel as the Biden administration did, and to the broader arms control regime. 

What could happen? 

In addition to energy and data infrastructure, the two sides will likely continue to deepen their defense relationship. During the May trip, the White House announced $142 billion in arms sales, and related weapons packages are now making their way through the Pentagon, including a Saudi request for F-35s—one of the world’s most advanced aircrafts. During the Biden administration, the F-35s were tied to Saudi-Israeli normalization. As with nuclear power, it is not clear whether such tethering will continue. 

Another key topic to watch is how the two leaders define their overall defense relationship. Saudi Arabia has long sought a defense treaty with the United States that would elevate the country among other US partners in the Gulf. Without full recognition of Israel—and given the current polarization in US politics—Riyadh is unlikely to be able to muster the two-thirds US Senate vote required for official ally status. Still, the Saudis likely want to upgrade their existing relationship.  

When Israel targeted Hamas leaders in Doha in September, Washington reacted quickly. Unlike in 2019 when the Trump administration responded to Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia by deploying select troops to the Kingdom, the administration responded to the Israeli attack on Doha with an executive order, upgrading the Qatar-US relationship from major non-NATO ally status—a status conferred by the Biden administration to facilitate arms exports—to one in which the United States now regards "any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to peace and security of the United States." Riyadh has long sought similar assurances, and MBS surely will be looking for something at least as significant given the depth and duration of US-Saudi ties.  

What we are likely to hear less about during this trip is human rights, which have been on the US-Saudi agenda for decades. The Trump administration is not inclined to make them as prominent of an issue as past administrations. MBS has helped himself by liberalizing his society, increasing the rights accorded to women, and working to expand the rights of guest workers. Still, human rights groups have raised the alarm that Saudi Arabia remains one of the countries ranked lowest on rights of free expression, and executions occur there at a stunning rate—300 already this year. The humanitarian crisis in Yemen also continues unabated. Still, it would be surprising to hear much, if anything, on these two specific topics. 

How are Gaza and the Abraham Accords involved?  

Commercial and defense discussions are, by comparison to diplomatic ones, easy to manage. The Saudis come to Washington in a bit of a tricky political spot, reluctant to join the Abraham Accords, a signature achievement of the first Trump administration. The recent announcement that Azerbaijan will join the Abraham Accords may be helpful to Trump, as it will allow him to show progress in expanding the agreement without putting the spotlight onto Saudi Arabia unduly. But Azerbaijan is hardly a substitute for Saudi Arabia. 

The two leaders will certainly touch on Saudi Arabia’s evolving role in Syria and, of course, Gaza. MBS was influential in lifting American sanctions against Syria, where Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been jockeying for influence. MBS will certainly want a first-hand account of the President’s meeting with Syrian President al-Sharaa earlier this week. Signs that Hezbollah may be rearming in neighboring Lebanon add urgency.  

The future of Gaza and the West Bank will likely prove the trickiest shoal to navigate. The Saudis want to ensure a strong influence in leading Gaza reconstruction given that they are expected to foot a large portion of the bill. Riyadh will want to better understand any future role for Turkey and Qatar, the two countries advocating for a stronger role for Hamas in Gaza’s future.  

The Saudis have dealt strongly with their own domestic political-religious opposition and have spent almost a quarter century trying to reduce their power internally. Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, is much less comfortable with Hamas playing a significant role in Gaza’s future. Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, has gone as far as saying that "Trump faces a straightforward choice between two incompatible directions for Gaza’s future. One path leads through Riyadh and Abu Dhabi; the other runs through Ankara and Doha. There is no middle ground."

What the two leaders decide on when it comes to Gaza, particularly in light of Turkish and Qatari interests, may serve as the most significant outcome of the meeting. It is also one that is unlikely to be shared in the press conferences and public talking points that will conclude November’s working visit.