SAUDI CROWN PRINCE TO MEET TRUMP, McMASTER AND PENCE, AND WILL VISIT HOLLYWOOD

Cultural and business ties expected to overshadow political agenda on Mohammed bin Salman’s US trip

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will meet US President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Adviser H R McMaster during his highly anticipated visit to America that starts tomorrow.

Prince Mohammed’s meeting with Mr Trump on Tuesday will be followed by a dinner hosted by Mr Pence on Wednesday, and another by Mr McMaster later this week, sources in Washington told The National.

Reports surfaced last week that Mr McMaster may be on his way out of the White House, but spokeswoman Sarah Sanders denied any changes at the National Security Council.

The Saudi embassy in Washington has not released a schedule of the Prince Mohammed’s two-and-half-week visit.

A tentative itinerary confirmed by US sources shows he will arrive in Washington late tomorrow, where he will spend three days in official meetings, including with Mr Trump at the Oval Office on Tuesday and with Congressional leaders from both parties.

On Friday, Prince Mohammed is likely to visit New York where he will attend a US-Saudi forum.

From there, he is expected to travel to Boston, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Houston. But the order of these stops is subject to change, the sources said.

In Boston, Prince Mohammed, 32, will visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. On the west coast, he is expected to meet the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, Apple chief executive Tim Cook, and leaders from other companies including Google and Facebook and Uber.

In Los Angeles, the Saudi crown prince, who ended a 35year ban on movie theatres in his country last December as part of wide-ranging social reforms, is expected to meet major names from the film industry to encourage investments in the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia hosted its first jazz festival last month.

The first days of his visit are likely to be devoted to regional issues, particularly the push to counter Iran, the war in Yemen and the Middle East peace process.

Mr Trump’s team is preparing to unveil a peace plan to resume negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Last week, the White House hosted a summit to address the worsening humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza, which was attended by Arab, European, UN and Israeli officials. Regional sources told The

National that while the US administration was pushing for a swift resolution to the Qatar dispute during Prince Mohammed’s visit, this was no longer a realistic expectation.

While on a visit to Egypt this month, the crown prince likened the dispute with Qatar to the decades-long US embargo on Cuba, as one that “could last a long time”.

A US delegation that included retired general Anthony Zinni and assistant secretary of state for Arabian Gulf affairs Tim Lenderking was not able to break the stalemate during a visit to the region weeks ago.

Counter-terrorism and defence co-operation will also be on the agenda, with Prince Mohammed expected to meet Defence Secretary James Mattis, who has just returned from a visit to the Middle East. But the economic and cultural aspects of Prince Mohammed’s visit are expected to top the political ones in Washington.

“Saudi Arabia is clearly courting investors, and also looking to partner with educational institutions like MIT and technology clusters to bring some of this expertise and innovation to the kingdom,” said Karen Young, a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

Ms Young told The National that economic ties today between Saudi Arabia and the US are stronger than ever, partly because of the “intricate connection, as Saudi Arabia is a large investor in US companies and US debt, and their currency is tied to the US dollar in value”.

The visit is Prince Mohammed’s second to Washington since Mr Trump took office, but his first since being made heir to the Saudi throne in June last year. He also visited the White House twice during the Obama government.

Today, CBS will broadcast Prince Mohammed’s first interview with a US television outlet. In excerpts released earlier, the crown prince warned that his country would obtain a nuclear bomb if Iran developed one.

“Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible,” he told CBS’s This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell in the interview for 60 Minutes.

The prince also stood by his comparison of Iran’s supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Adolf Hitler.

“No doubt,” he said. “Because Khamenei wants to expand. He wants to create his own project in the Middle East very much like Hitler, who wanted to expand at the time.”

Prince Mohammed’s US visit will be his third foreign trip this year. He visited Egypt on March 4 and was in Britain from March 7 to 9.

Saudi Arabia is clearly courting investors, and also looking to partner with educational institutions like MIT

KAREN YOUNG

Scholar at the Arab Gulf Institute

The sacking of the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was replaced by CIA chief Mike Pompeo, happened just before the visit this week of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Washington, DC. In truth, this represents an opportunity to force some firmness and exactitude into the US administration’s position on Saudi Arabia’s policy lines.

Indeed, Donald Trump’s fickleness has not only affected his administration but also US policy positions as a whole, despite them showing some coherence recently. Some figures in the Trump administration have clashed while others have worked well together. Some continue to try to influence the administration even after they had left the White House, such as Steve Bannon, while others are probably cursing the day they had agreed to work with the administration; perhaps most prominent among those is Mr Tillerson. But his sacking will be relief to some in the region, especially because of what was seen as his erstwhile sympathy for Iran and Qatar.

In contrast, Mr Pompeo is considered one of the hawks when it comes to Iran, while simultaneously being, like Mr Trump, an advocate of strengthening US ties with Saudi Arabia. Yet US policy and the performance of the administration has not instantly become clearer after the mixed signals of Mr Tillerson.

Therefore, in order to be successful, the crown prince’s US tour must seek to diagnose the root of the schizophrenia in US foreign policy and its symptoms. The Saudis must raise obvious and crucial questions, such as what does the US want in the Middle East?

Because without a clear answer, the ambiguity, deliberate or otherwise, might lead to something close to the April Glaspie scenario – the former US ambassador to Iraq who supposedly “lured” Saddam Hussein into the invasion of Kuwait by being vague about Washington’s stance, even suggesting consent. What happened next is history.

It will be crucial for the crown prince to put pressure on the US president and his team to forsake this ambiguity, because the current stage, whether in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the Middle East, cannot tolerate such an approach. The Saudis have a right to ask Mr Trump and his men for clarity, especially with Mr Pompeo in the State Department now alongside another solid pair of hands, National Security Adviser HR McMaster. For example, the Americans must clarify whether they are true committed partners when it comes to curbing Iranian meddling in Yemen. On this issue, despite the US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley’s tough line, the actual US policy on Yemen remains unfathomably vague.

The Saudis must ask: what does the US want in Yemen? In what ways does it intend to pressure Iran to modify its behaviour in Yemen? Does Washington see Yemen as a strictly Saudi problem, or does Washington see Yemen as a good place to launch a new partnership with Riyadh against Iranian incursions?

The US has also pursued conflicting lines on other pressing issues concerning the region. Today, there is an opportunity with the new team at the state department, especially given the timing of the crown prince’s visit.

HR McMaster has been the most clear of Mr Trump’s circle when it comes to committing to ending the Iranian project in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. By contrast, the Defence Secretary James Mattis is known in Washington as a liberal, despite being outwardly a conservative and a hawk. But with Mr Tillerson out, with Mr Pompeo’s appointment, and with the coming occupation of the State Department’s still vacant key positions by hawks rather than closeted liberals, Mr McMaster and his ilk could have the upper hand.

No one is guaranteed to remain in their post in the Trump era and reports suggest John Bolton is being groomed to replace Mr McMaster, although this could be part of the psychological warfare accompanying

The Saudis must raise questions about what the US wants in the region, to avoid another April Glaspie scenario

the competition for the administration’s core posts. However, if this turns out to be true, things could get complicated, because while Mr Bolton is tough on Iran he is tame with Israel and its influence on US policies, domestic and foreign, including on Iran itself.

Indeed, informed sources in Washington say that Mr McMaster wants to move quickly and decisively against Iranian projects “but the Israeli strategic thinking is that Israel does not want the Sunni-Shia conflict to end and wants it to last and linger”. For Israel, “as long as Sunni-Shia conflicts are raging and Saudi and Iran are squaring off, Tel Aviv will be let off the hook over having to resolve the Palestinian question, which Israel’s friends in Washington do not want to solve”, sources suggest. In other words, according to these sources, Israel fears that settling the Iranian issue would focus efforts on the Palestinian issue next. And Israel maintains immense influence on US policymakers in Washington.

So what do the Americans really want in the end? An answer to this question must come, at least on the major issues in the Middle East, to prevent ambiguity from causing a major miscalculation, or another April Glaspie moment.