Bin Salman’s Washington trip unlikely to yield normalization agreement.
The Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar reported: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will arrive in Washington on Monday. There, bin Salman will press for security guarantees from the United States, and in return, US President Donald Trump will encourage bin Salman to normalize relations with Israel.
It is unlikely that Saudi Arabia will agree to normalize relations at this stage, because bin Salman – after Israel attacked Qatar, a strong US ally, in September – has prioritized receiving stronger security guarantees from the United States and has announced the establishment of a Palestinian state as his public condition for normalizing relations.
In this context, Aziz Al-Ghashian of the Washington-based think tank for Arab Gulf States wrote: “It seems that for the Saudis, the purpose of this trip is threefold: to strengthen, consolidate and facilitate security and defense cooperation.”
In addition to advanced air and missile defense systems, reports indicate that Riyadh is seeking to purchase F-35 fighter jets during this trip, which are currently only available to Israel in the Middle East.