Saudi Crown Prince MBS to visit Trump on Nov 18: White House

The Saudi Arabian leader’s visit will be his second with Trump as US president, eight years after his 2017 trip to Washington, DC.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) will visit Washington, DC, later this month for an official working meeting with US President Donald Trump, a White House official said, marking the Saudi Arabian leader’s second visit to the United States capital in seven years.

News outlets have previously reported on the crown prince’s visit to the White House, but Reuters was the first to report on Monday that the meeting will be held on November 18.

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The visit of the Saudi royal comes as Trump pushes countries to join the Abraham Accords.

In 2020, Trump reached deals with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco to normalise relations with Israel. But Saudi Arabia has consistently said that any normalisation of ties with Israel is contingent on a clear path for the creation of a Palestinian state, alongside Israel.

In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Trump told CBS News’s 60 Minutes programme that he believed Saudi Arabia would ultimately join the accords.

The unnamed senior Trump administration official told the Reuters news agency that “there are discussions about signing something when the crown prince comes, but details are in flux”.

The Financial Times reported two weeks ago that there were hopes the two countries could sign a defence deal during MBS’s visit.

Saudi Arabia and the US have maintained strong relations for decades, including in the defence sector.

During Trump’s visit to Riyadh in May, the US agreed to sell Saudi Arabia an arms package worth nearly $142bn.

During his first term as president, in 2017, Trump likewise included Saudi Arabia on his first major trip abroad, a voyage that similarly culminated in a multibillion-dollar arms deal.

It was also during Trump’s first term that MBS visited the White House and toured several cities in the US.