Trump's personal diplomacy and family business intersect in Gulf tour
President Donald Trump is visiting the Middle East from May 13-16. It is the first major foreign trip of his second term.
- Trump is traveling to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
- The Trump administration wants investment for the United States from the Middle East.
- The president left Washington shortly after American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander was freed by Hamas after 19 months in captivity.
LONDON − It won't be his first ceremonial sword dance.
President Donald Trump, who arrived in Saudi Arabia for the start of three days of summits among wealthy Persian Gulf rulers, first traveled to the region in 2017 where, in an ornate, Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom in the Saudi capital, he promised "partnership, based on shared interests and values." Ahead of a state dinner, he swayed to the "ardah," a traditional performance combining dance, poetry and swordplay.
Now Trump is back in the Middle East, blending business and diplomacy from May 13 to 16. In addition to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he will visit Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and Doha, Qatar.
"What Trump really wants to get out of this trip is success," said Frank Lowenstein, a former Middle East envoy in the Obama administration.
"He wants to make big announcements, especially those that he can say are benefiting the American public, but also to the extent possible that are consistent with his agenda and his narrative, which is, 'I end foreign wars and I get hostages home,'" Lowenstein said.
Deals and diplomacy
Trump is again diverging from U.S. presidential habit by choosing the Middle East, not Canada or Mexico, for the first foreign trip of his second term. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump is returning eight years after his first-term trip for "commerce and cultural exchanges."
Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar are three of the world's richest nations and they invest deeply in military and security technologies. Saudi Arabia has already pledged to invest $600 billion in American companies. In March, Trump said he wanted the petro-kingdom to commit to $1 trillion. All three countries serve as intermediaries in conflicts from Gaza to Ukraine.
On the day of Trump's departure, Hamas released U.S.-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, believed to be the last living American captive in Gaza. Hamas said his release was part of efforts to reach a fresh ceasefire in the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas forces rampaged across southern Israel. Israel has yet to commit to a new ceasefire.
Abraham Accords expanded?
In his first term, Trump brokered a series of landmark deals, known as the Abraham Accords, under which Arab states including the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco for the first time recognized Israel. The goal was to provide economic incentives for peace. But the accords barely mentioned Palestinians and their desire for a future state, one of several factors that prevented Saudi Arabia from signing on.
Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has insisted there can be no Saudi normalization until Tel Aviv halts its military campaign in Gaza.
However, Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told an audience at the Israeli Embassy in Washington on May 5 that he expected progress in expanding the Abraham Accords. "We think we will have some or a lot of announcements very, very shortly, which we hope will yield progress by next year," Witkoff said in a video of his speech.
Keeping business and global affairs separate
Still, some experts say Trump's visit is in danger of blurring business and politics.
"It's hard to know what the main mission will be," said Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. "Part of the problem is that with Trump the personal and geopolitical are all intertwined. He's doing business, partly on behalf of the U.S., partly on what looks like his own behalf."
In fact, all three stops on Trump's Middle East tour are places where he and his family have major business interests.
In recent weeks, the president's sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who now run The Trump Organization, the holding company for Trump's personal business ventures and investments, visited the UAE and Qatar to preside over deals involving family real estate and cryptocurrency ventures.
In late April, Dar Global, a London-based Saudi Arabian real-estate developer with close ties to the kingdom's royal family, and The Trump Organization, announced a new luxury hotel in Dubai. Dar Global and The Trump Organization are also pairing up to build a second high-end residential tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The Trump family firm recently struck a deal to a build an 18-hole golf course and resort in Qatar that will feature Trump-branded beachside villas.
For this, it's partnering with Qatari Diar, a firm owned by Qatar's government. In the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, a government-backed investment firm recently made a $2 billion investment in a crypto business deal that could serve as a major boost for the Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial, according to Zach Witkoff, its cofounder and the son of Trump's Middle East envoy.
In recent days Trump has defended the idea of possibly accepting the gift of a Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar for use as Air Force One.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank, said it was no surprise Trump chose to visit wealthy Gulf allies.
"These are the three countries you would choose to visit in the region whether your name is Trump or not, whether you have businesses there or not," said Parsi, who noted Trump recently built a golf course in nearby Oman, a country he is not visiting and that's hosting nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran.
The Trump Organization didn't return a request for comment.
"It’s frankly ridiculous anyone in this room would suggest President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit. He left a life of luxury and a life of running a very successful real estate empire for public service," said Leavitt, the White House press secretary.
Greg Swenson, an investment banker who chairs the United Kingdom-based chapter of Republicans Overseas, said Trump should avoid blurring personal business and diplomacy.
"The Saudis and Emiratis are our friends. They also have boatloads of money," he said.
"But you don't want to bridge that fine line of influence-peddling," Swenson added, noting that former President Joe Biden's son Hunter was involved in overseas business deals.
A detained American in Saudi Arabia
One person hoping to profit − not economically − from Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia is Saad Ibrahim Almadi, a 75-year-old dual U.S.-Saudi citizen. He was arrested in Riyadh in November 2021 when he arrived for a family visit.
Almadi was found guilty of seeking to "destabilize" the kingdom, based on a series of now-deleted social media posts he sent that raised concerns about poverty and the demolition of old parts of the cities of Mecca and Jeddah.
The posts also referenced the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was ambushed, strangled and dismembered by a 15-member squad of Saudi government operatives inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Trump brushed aside the grisly killing of Khashoggi in his first term. Almadi's son, Ibrahim, is hoping his father, who spent a year in a Saudi jail and has since been banned from leaving the country, won't face a similar fate. He has appealed to Trump via Speaker Mike Johnson to help get his father home.
"He fears that every knock on the door is someone coming to take him back to prison," Ibrahim, who lives in Florida, said of his father.