Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is returning to the United States for the first time in more than seven years and will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on November 18, 2025. The much-anticipated visit by the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia comes six months after Trump himself made the kingdom the destination for the first major foreign trip of his second term, just as Trump did in May 2017 during his first term in office. A US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center on November 19, 2025, is expected to kick-start the many economic agreements reached during Trump’s May 2025 Riyadh trip. The nature of any defense pact or enhanced security guarantees from the United States to Saudi Arabia will also be watched closely, especially in the aftermath of the June 2025 12-Day War, in which Israel and the United States fought Iran, and the recent US security pledge to Qatar.
Although the principals—MBS and Donald Trump—remain the same, the circumstances of this visit differ significantly from the extravagant three-week, seven-city US tour that the then-newly appointed crown prince made in March and April 2018. On that occasion, the brash young leader-in-waiting met with a wide swath of the American political and business elite, including three former US presidents, in an attempt to publicize the transformation of Saudi Arabia after the launch of Vision 2030 less than a year earlier. The optics of the 2018 visit were overshadowed, however, by the Gulf rift that pitted Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) against Qatar—and then entirely overtaken by Saudi officials’ October 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. US intelligence agencies later assessed that the operation had been approved by MBS himself.
This time around, Mohammed bin Salman has re-emerged from the shadow of the Khashoggi killing and has moved on from the regional rivalries that accompanied his rise to power. As 2030 draws closer, the crown prince arrives in the United States determined to enhance security guarantees for the kingdom and to adapt Saudi investment priorities to the fast-changing domestic and regional landscapes.
An Older, Wiser MBS?
The leadership in Riyadh has focused on domestic growth and has in recent years replaced geopolitical competition with an emphasis on de-escalating regional tensions. As the 2030 milestone approaches, the Saudi authorities seek to ensure that nothing jeopardizes progress to diversify the economy beyond oil and make the kingdom an attractive destination for global capital and talent. Mohammed bin Salman is so closely associated with Vision 2030 and various giga-projects, such as the massive NEOM development, that it seems he, and only he, can deliver the transformative change that he promised for Saudi Arabia. The level of foreign direct investment, however, remains anemic and below expectations, while financial constraints and supply-chain realities have caused a drastic scaling back of plans for the linear city called “The Line.” Saudi Arabia has shifted focus to sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI) that are earmarked for accelerated development and that the leadership in Riyadh views as a priority.
Saudi Arabia intends to deepen and diversify its deterrence capabilities.
It is against this backdrop that Mohammed bin Salman makes his third visit to the White House (a March 2017 working lunch with Trump preceded his spring 2018 tour). The impact of Israel’s two-year war on Gaza and of this summer’s Israeli and US attacks on Iran continues to reverberate across the region. Iran’s June 2025 missile strikes against Qatar and Israel’s September 2025 attack on Doha crossed firm red lines in Gulf states’ security and defense calculations and injected a real sense of urgency into policymaking across the region. The immediate Saudi response was the signing of a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement with Pakistan on September 17, 2025. The pact was an upgrade to a longstanding bilateral relationship but was nevertheless significant for the signals that it sent to other regional security participants of Saudi Arabia’s intent to act rapidly to deepen and diversify its extended deterrence capabilities.
Normalization with Israel
One issue that has taken up significant bandwidth in Washington foreign policy discussions but that is unlikely to see any near-term breakthrough is a US-brokered normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both President Joe Biden and Trump in his first term failed to broker a normalization agreement, and all signals indicate that MBS will continue to resist pressure from Trump on this matter. In return for normalizing relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia reportedly wants a US Senate-ratified defense treaty and US support for a Saudi civilian nuclear program. It is less likely that without the sweetener of a breakthrough with Israel, either or both of these key Saudi demands will proceed as stand-alone agreements. Media reports have suggested that a US-Saudi defense pact may be signed during the visit, possibly involving a written US security guarantee similar to what was included in Trump’s September 2025 executive order assuring Qatar’s security following Israel’s Doha attack.
Consideration of Security Guarantees
Saudi officials recall Trump’s tepid response to the September 2019 missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil processing plant at Abqaiq and the Khurais oilfield, in which the US president distinguished between Saudi and US interests and stated that it was not an attack on the United States. Although oil production quickly returned to normal levels, the strikes—likely conducted by Yemen’s Houthis with some Iranian assistance—highlighted the need for Saudi Arabia to reestablish a credible deterrence against destabilizing regional actors. The urgency of this concern only increased in the wake of the 2025 Iranian and Israeli strikes on Qatar. Saudi attention has since focused on identifying a substantial package of additional forms of US security assistance and specific security commitments, albeit non-binding in nature. These matters were likely discussed in the November 11, 2025 meetings between Saudi Minister of Defense Khalid bin Salman, brother of the crown prince, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia would be the first Arab country to receive the fifth-generation fighter.
To offset Trump’s refusal to provide Riyadh with a binding security guarantee, the United States may finally approve the Kingdom’s purchase of F-35 fighter jets—as President Trump himself indicated the day before his meeting with MBS. Aside from modernizing the Saudi air force, the sale of F-35s would carry symbolic value as Saudi Arabia would be the first Arab country—and the second country in the Middle East after Israel—to receive the fifth-generation stealth fighter. In 2020, the Trump administration notified Congress of its plan to sell F-35s to the United Arab Emirates as part of the Abraham Accords, but the deal unraveled in 2021, during the Biden administration, because of US concerns about rising Chinese influence in Abu Dhabi. Emirati officials had wanted to acquire the F-35 for years. If Saudi Arabia were to do so, especially in the absence of any normalization link with Israel, it would constitute a headline statement of US intent and give Saudi Arabia a qualitative edge over its Gulf counterparts. It may be that the sale of F-35s will satisfy Riyadh for the time being, pending any later progress toward normalization and approvals of additional advanced weaponry that could be tied into any eventual US-brokered peace deal with Israel.
Business and Investment
In the context of Trump’s transactional policymaking style, which has exceeded that of his first term in the blurring of public and private interests, Riyadh (and other Gulf capitals) might surmise that giving the administration a vested interest in Saudi prosperity through investment and business deals would offer a way forward in the absence of any formal defense guarantees. However, Gulf officials’ optimism that Trump had understood the relationship between regional stability and economic opportunity earlier this year was shattered when Israel attacked Iran on June 13, 2025. In their November 18, 2025 meeting, MBS is likely to remind Trump of this connection, and will emphasize it at the November 19 investment summit where bilateral agreements on artificial intelligence, healthcare, infrastructure, energy, and financial services are expected to be signed. There was a strong Saudi presence at the November 5, 2025 America Business Forum in Miami, at which the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund was the ‘presenting partner’ and Trump spoke. The upcoming Kennedy Center investment summit will seek to continue the momentum of US-Saudi business development. Mohammed bin Salman and senior members of the Saudi delegation will emphasize the value of a regional order based on prosperity, not rooted in conflict.
During his May 2025 visit to Riyadh, Trump announced that Saudi companies had committed to investing $600 billion in the United States, although this figure included non-binding memoranda of understanding or previously announced and seemingly repurposed investment plans. However, the scale of Saudi buildout of its domestic technology sector, centered on artificial intelligence, makes it likely that this sector will feature prominently on Mohammed bin Salman’s agenda in ways that were not apparent as recently as Trump’s visit to the Kingdom five months ago. Humain, a Saudi AI company in which the Public Investment Fund is the majority shareholder and US corporations such as Amazon have made massive investments, became the focus of Saudi ambition right before Trump’s May 2025 visit. Humain plans to invest across all areas of AI, including data centers, cloud computing, and advanced AI models and services. The Trump administration’s October 2025 approval of export licenses for the transfer of 60,000 of the most advanced Nvidia chips to the United Arab Emirates raised the bar in a crowded regional AI landscape, and the Saudi delegation to Washington will want to ensure that the kingdom at least remains on par with its Gulf competitor.
Regaining Momentum
Whereas Mohammed bin Salman’s March 2018 US visit aimed to introduce the 32-year-old crown prince and his transformative vision to American audiences, his November 2025 visit marks the return of an older, wiser leader. In 2018, the delivery date of Vision 2030 seemed far away. Seven years later, the pressure is on MBS to deliver tangible outcomes. As the kingdom is reassessing projects such as The Line on grounds of cost as well as impossibility, the refocusing of the Public Investment Fund away from the giga-projects and toward areas such as minerals, logistics, and AI, in addition to sports, entertainment, and tourism, amounts to a retooling of Saudi economic priorities as Vision 2030 enters its final phase. Such have been the contrasting signals around the downscaling of the giga-projects and the upscaling of investment into AI that it is tempting to view the giga-projects as relics of an earlier era and the current focus on tech development as an effort to breathe new life into Vision 2030. Mohammed bin Salman’s US trip therefore aims to regain momentum from Trump’s May 2025 visit that was lost over the summer of regional conflict and to obtain new assurances that will define the US-Saudi relationship for the remainder of Trump’s time in office.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
Featured image credit: The White House
