President Trump will lobby Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to normalize relations with Israel when he rolls out the red carpet for the Middle East leader Tuesday in Washington.
Securing diplomatic and commercial ties between the Middle East power and Israel would be a major coup for Mr. Trump.
It could prompt other Arab nations to join the Abraham Accords, a signature Trump project that normalized relations between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates in 2020.
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Securing a deal between the world’s only Jewish state and the world’s most influential Arab and Muslim state would be “transformative” and “historic,” said John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
“It would cement Trump’s legacy as perhaps the most consequential American president ever in the Middle East. It would also be the stuff of a near-certain Nobel Peace Prize,” he said.
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Yet the Saudis have been reluctant, particularly given concerns about the toll of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Saudi demands for Palestinian statehood, which Israel rejects.
“Normalization just isn’t ripe yet. It won’t happen on this trip,” Mr. Hannah said. “The carnage of two years of war in Gaza has reset the table in terms of what [the crown prince] needs on resolving the Palestinian issue in order to justify playing the peace card with Israel, both with his own people and the broader Arab and Muslim world.”
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MBS “embarrassingly finds himself playing catch-up to Qatar in the pecking order of U.S. security guarantees in the Middle East,” Mr. Hannah said. “Given Saudi Arabia’s storied eight-decade-old historic relationship with Washington, that’s not where the Gulf’s most influential and powerful state wants to find itself for long.”…
The White House visit, in itself, might be the most significant development yet in the Trump-MBS alliance.
“It’s a huge victory and achievement for MBS — from pariah to being feted and celebrated on the White House lawn and at the equivalent of a state dinner,” Mr. Hannah said. “It’s an emphatic statement about the significant — and growing — geopolitical weight of Saudi Arabia, warts and all, and of the historic steps MBS has taken through his transformational program of economic, social and cultural reform to rapidly expand the kingdom’s diplomatic power and influence both regionally and globally.”