Saudi king names son ambassador to U.S.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s King Salman issued a decree late Saturday naming one of his sons, an air force pilot who has taken part in coalition strikes against the Islamic State militant group, as the kingdom’s new ambassador to the U.S.

The appointment of Prince Khaled bin Salman to Washington signals the eagerness of Saudi Arabia, the world’s third-largest defense spender, to strengthen ties under President Donald Trump. As the king’s son, the prince has a direct line to the Saudi monarch.

Saudi-U.S. relations had cooled under President Barack Obama’s administration after Washington pursued a nuclear accord with Shiite-ruled Iran that the Sunni-ruled kingdom strongly opposed. Saudi Arabia and Iran are regional rivals and back opposing sides in the wars in Syria and Yemen.

Relations with Saudi Arabia have improved since Trump took office. King Salman dispatched his most powerful son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is also defense minister, to meet Trump at the White House last month. Saudi Arabia was quick to praise Trump’s missile strike on a Syrian military base in response to an apparent chemical weapons attack on civilians.

Prince Khaled is a former F-15 pilot who graduated military-aviation training from Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi in 2009 and took part in anti-Islamic State strikes in 2014 as part of the U.S.-led coalition.

The Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news website says the prince studied briefly at Harvard University and Georgetown University. The news website says he trained at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada but that a back injury forced him to stop flying.

He has been an adviser at the Saudi Embassy in Washington since late last year.