Gulf States See Trump as Ally They Can Do Business With

About two weeks before the American presidential election, Donald J. Trump sat for an interview with a widely watched Arabic-language TV channel owned by Saudi Arabia and praised the kingdom’s crown prince, calling him a “visionary” and a “friend.”

Mr. Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, did not grant any interviews to Arabic-language international media during her truncated campaign.

The contrast was not lost on observers in the resource-rich Gulf states, where a certain comfort with the idea of another Trump presidency came across in the weeks ahead of the election on Tuesday.

“Obviously, we worked with President Trump before, so we know him and we can find a way to work with him very well,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, told CNN last week during the kingdom’s annual investment forum nicknamed “Davos in the Desert.”

During his last presidency, Mr. Trump fostered personal relationships with Gulf leaders, offered strong defense support for their countries while steering away from criticizing their human rights records. This time around, the Gulf states will likely look to the new Trump administration for help in ending the devastating war in the Middle East, firm security guarantees and American investment as they try to diversify the region’s economic base away from almost total reliance on energy.

Mr. Trump’s Oct. 20 interview with the Saudi-owned television channel, Al Arabiya, underscored the strong connections that the former president has forged with Gulf leaders over the years.

“I have so much respect for Mohammed, who is doing so great,” Mr. Trump said in the interview, referring to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. “I mean, he’s really a visionary.”

The Saudi crown prince was one of the first foreign leaders to speak with Mr. Trump following his election victory, saying his kingdom was looking forward to “deepening historic and strategic relations” with the United States.

Even beyond the close security relationship and business ties between Mr. Trump and the Gulf, many ordinary people in the region, particularly youth, prefer the more conservative social values espoused by the Republican Party.

President Biden, who Ms. Harris is inextricably linked to, has on the other hand had a much more fraught history with Gulf leaders.

He infuriated many Saudis in 2019 when he was campaigning for president, calling the kingdom a “pariah” over the murder and dismemberment of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A few years later, President Biden fist-bumped Crown Prince Mohammed during an awkward encounter in Saudi Arabia, where the American leader was trying to secure an agreement to pump more oil and relieve high gas prices at home.

The Gulf states have also been frustrated with the Biden administration’s strong military and political support for Israel in the current Middle East war — a sentiment that fed concerns in the region about a Harris presidency.

Democratic Party leaders have often advocated a more critical approach to human rights problems in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, a strategy perceived by many in the Gulf as condescending and potentially destabilizing for their national security because it could foment opposition.

During his presidency, Mr. Trump avoided overt criticism on human rights. It helped pave the way for the strengthening of the Saudi-American relationship, marked by robust defense support and a more aggressive U.S. stance against the kingdom’s longtime regional rival, Iran.

Mr. Trump also developed a personal rapport with both Crown Prince Mohammed and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, president of the United Arab Emirates, while diplomatic engagements with President Biden and Ms. Harris were more formal.

Mr. Trump chose the Saudi capital, Riyadh, for his first overseas trip as president in 2017, signaling the importance he placed on the relationship. In the years that followed, he stood by Crown Prince Mohammed despite the CIA’s assessment that he had likely ordered the murder of Mr. Khashoggi in 2018.

But it wasn’t always smooth. Some Gulf officials have lamented that Mr. Trump did not respond more strongly to an Iran-backed attack on Saudi oil fields in 2019 that temporarily knocked out half of the country’s oil production.

As Mr. Trump’s first term neared its end in 2020, his administration brokered what it considered a crowning achievement in the Middle East, the historic Abraham Accords. The deal opened diplomatic relations between Israel and two Gulf states, the Emirates and Bahrain. The two Arab countries did not use their leverage to insist on the creation of a Palestinian state — as Gulf nations had long demanded.

As Mr. Trump heads into a second term, the path for his security and diplomatic agenda in the Middle East may be more complicated.

A new Trump administration may try to revive a plan to establish a Saudi-Israeli peace deal in exchange for a strengthened defense pact with the United States and American support for a civilian Saudi nuclear program. All three countries involved appeared to have been closing in on a deal before Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza broke out on Oct. 7, 2023.

The conflict stalled the momentum and the Saudis are now insisting on the creation of a Palestinian state first, a hardening of their prewar stance.

When Mr. Trump was last in office, he released a contentious peace plan that was seen as heavily slanted toward Israel and would not have given the Palestinians a full-fledged state.

The Gulf states also worry that further escalation of the regional war will undermine their efforts to diversify their economies away from near-total reliance on energy and threaten their ambitious development plans.

In that vein, the Gulf has long viewed Mr. Trump as a business partner, something that did not change even after he lost the 2020 elections.

Since leaving office, his family members have engaged in various deals across the region, including projects in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, secured a $2 billion investment from a Saudi government fund for his private equity firm six months after Mr. Trump left the White House.

In September, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, expressed concerns that Saudi investments in Mr. Kushner’s fund raise “obvious conflicts of interest,” particularly with his father-in-law running for re-election.

For Mr. Trump, the path to strong ties with the Gulf is personal.

In an interview with Bloomberg in July, he sounded confident that he had found the formula for a harmonious relationship with Saudi Arabia — his connection plus U.S. security guarantees.

“He likes me. I like him,” he said of the Saudi crown prince. “They’re always going to need protection, and I’ll always protect them. I’ve had a great relationship with him.”