The Art of a Deal With Saudi Arabia

Trump says he’ll sell the F-35 fighter jets and more. What is MBS willing to give?

It wasn’t long ago that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, was declared a “pariah” in Washington. President Biden came to regret his remark to that effect as soon as he needed help on oil prices and diplomacy. By contrast, President Trump needs no reminders of the importance of U.S.-Saudi relations. The question after Tuesday’s love-in at the White House is whether he suffers from the opposite excess.

Donald Trump and Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's crown prince, during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025.(Bloomberg)

Mr. Trump showed the visiting Crown Prince a portrait of a Biden autopen signature, before saying ABC News should lose its license for unfriendly questioning. Not an advertisement for democratic values. On the substance, MBS knew what he wanted on this trip, and it seems he will go home with much of it.

F-35 stealth fighters? “We’re going to sell them F-35s, that’s the end of the question,” Mr. Trump said. Would the U.S. agree to defend Saudi Arabia from attack? “We pretty much have,” the President answered.

Both are worth thinking through. Saudi Arabia conducted military exercises with China as recently as October and is vulnerable to espionage. Will Riyadh alter that relationship? That’s a fair requirement on which to insist. Similar concerns tanked Mr. Trump’s effort in 2020 to sell F-35s to the United Arab Emirates.

If an F-35 sale to the Saudis goes forward, a law passed by Congress requires that the U.S. maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge.” The Trump Administration can find a way to do that if it’s interested.

A security guarantee, which means potentially committing U.S. troops to war, is also nothing to take lightly. Rather than submit this to the Senate, the plan seems to be to issue an executive order, as Mr. Trump did with Qatar in September. But at the time, a Trump official told us that this type of guarantee isn’t the real thing. So what is it?

Mr. Trump was less committal, thankfully, on a possible agreement to help Saudi Arabia with civilian nuclear energy. “I can see that happening. It’s not urgent,” he said, pointing out the incongruity of the ask when “you have more oil than almost anyone else.”

The Crown Prince has spoken before about pursuing nuclear weapons, and the regional proliferation risk from civilian enrichment would be significant. The better way to reassure the Saudis—and everyone else—is to keep Iran’s nuclear program in ruins.

Many agreements with Riyadh were mooted in the Biden years, but the U.S. held off, waiting for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords and solidify the U.S. regional alliance. Now some deals are going ahead anyway, without that kind of significant American geopolitical gain.

“We want to be part of the Abraham Accords, but we want also to be sure that we secure a clear path to a two-state solution,” MBS said Tuesday. After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, this formulation keeps a deal out of reach.

What will the U.S. get from MBS’s trip? So far, the answer is cash money. The Crown Prince said his May pledge of $600 billion in investments in the U.S. will be raised to $1 trillion. Wait to see how much of it materializes. But a strengthened U.S.-Saudi relationship is good news. From China and Israel to Yemen and Iran, there’s much the Saudis can do for America. For what Mr. Trump is offering them, though, he ought to make sure he isn’t asking too little.