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May 15, 2025
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Live Updates: Trump to Visit U.A.E. in Last Stop of Middle East Tour
In Qatar on Thursday, President Trump is scheduled to visit the largest U.S. military base in the region. He will then fly to the United Arab Emirates, another key ally.
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Luke BroadwaterJonathan Swan and
Here’s the latest.
President Trump was set to travel on Thursday from Qatar to the United Arab Emirates, the final leg of a Middle East tour that has so far yielded a major diplomatic breakthrough with Syria and multibillion-dollar deals for U.S. firms.
Mr. Trump was attending an event with business leaders in Qatar’s capital, Doha, on Thursday morning before heading to the Al Udeid Air Base to address American troops. Al Udeid, which Qatar lets the United States use, is the largest American military base in the region.
Qatar greeted Mr. Trump with pomp, including a fighter jet escort for Air Force One, when he arrived on Wednesday. Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, effusively praised Mr. Trump, who in turn called his host a “great gentleman” and a “friend of mine.”
And while neither leader mentioned it on Wednesday, Mr. Trump plans to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 as a donation from Qatar’s royal family to serve as Air Force One. There has been backlash from Democrats and even some of Mr. Trump’s supporters to the proposal, which would raise extensive legal and ethical issues. The president has said he would be “stupid” not to accept the plane.
Later on Thursday, Mr. Trump is scheduled to fly to another key U.S. ally, the United Arab Emirates, where he is expected to meet the country’s ruler, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Here’s what else to know:
Syria breakthrough: In Saudi Arabia, the first stop on Mr. Trump’s tour, he announced on Tuesday that he would lift U.S. sanctions on Syria, an economic lifeline to a country devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war. The next day, in an extraordinary encounter, he met with Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Shara, whose rebel alliance ousted the dictator Bashar al-Assad in December.
Qatar’s makeover: The bonhomie during Mr. Trump’s visit to Qatar was in sharp contrast to his first term, when he described the country as “a funder of terrorism at a very high level.” Qatar has spent vast sums in recent years to transform its global reputation, in part by hiring lobbyists in the United States and elsewhere.
Talks in Turkey: Delegations from Ukraine and Russia are set to meet in Istanbul in the latest effort to end the war between them. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is not expected to attend, and Mr. Trump indicated on Wednesday that he too would skip the peace talks.
Ahead of a NATO meeting in Antalya, Turkey, on Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the Trump administration was “impatient” for progress in the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. He said President Trump was “open to virtually any mechanism” that could engender a lasting peace. “We want to see it happen, but it’s difficult,” he added.
I’m among a scrum of journalists outside the palace in Istanbul where today’s Ukraine-Russia talks are expected to take place — if they happen at all. A Russian delegation has arrived in Istanbul, a Turkish state-run news agency reported. But it’s not clear whether Ukraine will participate in the talks given that Putin is not expected to attend.
Trump talked about the war in Ukraine in Doha this morning. “I just hope that Russia and Ukraine are able to do something, because it has to stop,” he said, adding that he was not going to Turkey because Putin was not going.
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President Trump says his trip to the Middle East has been “tremendous” so far, praising Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, his hosts on the first two legs of the visit.
“Iran is very lucky” that Qatar is lobbying for a deal for that country instead of military action against it, President Trump says. Continuing the bonhomie from Wednesday night, he also praises the U.S. relationship with Qatar. “We’ve never had a relationship with Qatar as strong as this,” he says. “We’re going to protect you.”
Marc SantoraAndrew E. Kramer and
Ukrainian and Russian officials are in Turkey. Will they meet?
Ukrainian and Russian delegations arrived in Turkey before a possible round of talks to end the war between the countries but from the start, there was confusion over whether they would even meet.
On Thursday morning, reporters gathered outside Dolmabahce, an Ottoman palace on the Bosporus, where talks between Ukraine and Russia took place in March 2022. Tass, a Russian state news agency, had reported that Thursday’s talks would take place there, citing an anonymous source.
But as television reporters from around the world jostled for space on the sidewalk near the palace in Istanbul to do their stand-ups, no one seemed to know whether the negotiations would take place — or whether there was even a Ukrainian delegation in the same city.
The potential talks have been guided by gamesmanship ever since President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia first proposed negotiations in Turkey. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine personally took up the offer, saying he would join. President Trump said he too might go if Mr. Putin did.
But, late on Wednesday, it seemed that Mr. Putin of Russia would not attend, when his name did not appear on a list of officials who would be present.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was also unlikely to join, as he and the country’s foreign minister were expected to be in Ankara, for another meeting scheduled with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
A spokeswoman for the head of Russia’s delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, declined to provide any specifics about Thursday’s planned talks. Ukraine’s National Security Council declined to comment on plans for the talks.
A meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky would have been the first between the two men since before Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, launching a war that by conservative estimates has resulted in well over one million dead and injured soldiers on both sides.
If other officials from Ukraine and Russia meet, it would be the first known direct peace talks between the two countries since March 2022.
Mr. Zelensky, speaking in his nightly address to the nation on Wednesday, said he was still not sure how things would play out.
“This week really may change a lot — but only may,” he said. “Everything is being decided right now.”
How did we get here?
The prospect of a high-profile cease-fire negotiation in Turkey was the latest turn in a rapidly shifting diplomatic landscape.
Mr. Trump came into office earlier this year promising to bring the war to a swift conclusion. He began his efforts on Feb. 12, with phone calls first to Mr. Putin and then to Mr. Zelensky. He did not coordinate efforts with European allies, who have stood united behind Ukraine.
After the calls, he said he believed both Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky wanted peace. But the Trump administration strategy was to pressure Kyiv, blaming Ukraine for being invaded by Russia.
“You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said at one point, referring to Ukraine’s leaders. “You could have made a deal.”
In late February, Mr. Zelensky traveled to Washington to meet with Mr. Trump, but the visit ended in disaster when Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance castigated the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office for not being grateful enough for U.S. support. Mr. Trump then briefly suspended military assistance and intelligence sharing.
At the same time, he was trying to induce Moscow to agree to a cease-fire by holding out the prospect of economic relief from sanctions.
With British and French guidance, Ukraine moved quickly to mend fences with the president and within less than two weeks, at a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, agreed to a key demand of the Trump administration: an immediate and unconditional 30-day cease-fire, abandoning demands for security guarantees before a truce.
Mr. Putin rebuffed that idea. But both sides agreed to a limited truce covering strikes on energy infrastructure, although each accused the other almost immediately of violations.
Mr. Putin then proposed a three-day cease-fire to coincide with an annual Victory Day parade in Moscow commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Kyiv did not agree to that.
Overall, during the first months of this year, while Mr. Trump was trying to broker peace talks, the hostilities were far deadlier than the same period last year, according to the United Nations.
On Saturday, one day after Mr. Putin’s Victory Day parade, the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Poland traveled to Kyiv to issue an ultimatum: Russia either agreed to an immediate and unconditional cease-fire or it faced a new round of withering economic sanctions.
Mr. Putin responded with his own gambit: a proposal for Ukraine and Russia to resume direct negotiations starting on Thursday in Turkey.
Mr. Zelensky answered swiftly with his challenge to Mr. Putin to attend the talks, trying to put the onus on the Russian leader.
What does Russia want?
When Mr. Putin and other Russian leaders talk about ending the war, they focus on what they call the “root causes” of the conflict — Kremlin shorthand for a range of issues including the existence of Ukraine as a fully independent and sovereign nation aligned with the West.
Specifically, the Kremlin says it wants control over five Ukrainian territories, including wide swaths of land it has failed to seize despite the years of war. Mr. Putin has also demanded that Ukraine agree to strict limitations on its military, and that Ukraine not join NATO. He has also never wavered in his insistence that all Western military assistance to Ukraine needs to be suspended before a cease-fire begins.
Despite the staggering losses his forces have suffered, Mr. Putin seems to believe he is in a strong position to make sweeping demands, gambling that his military will eventually bleed out the Ukrainians.
What Does Ukraine Want?
With Russia holding the initiative on the front for more than 16 months, many Ukrainians have concluded that they are unlikely to drive the Russians off their lands militarily. And so Kyiv wants to freeze the fighting where it is and then make a case that any formal recognition of Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian lands violate basic tenets of international law and set a dangerous precedent.
Kyiv has also said it will accept no limitations on its military. Its European allies have vowed to continue to work to strengthen Ukraine after any truce to ensure Russia is not tempted to attack again.
There are also a host of other complicated issues at play, among them the return of thousands of children taken from their families to Russia.
Nataliia Novosolova contributed research.
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President Trump is speaking at a business roundtable in Doha with business leaders, discussing his administration’s policies to encourage investment in the United States. He is flanked by the chief executives of Boeing and GE Aerospace, both of which have been involved in major deals announced during this trip.
President Trump’s second day in Qatar includes a visit to the American troops stationed at Al Udeid, the largest U.S. military base in the region. The Pentagon has described Al Udeid as a critical hub for U.S. military operations in the Middle East. In recent years, the U.S. Air Force has deployed advanced fighters, long-range bombers, drones and refueling tanker planes to the base.
It’s 93 degrees and sunny here in Doha as President Trump gets ready to participate in a business roundtable at the St. Regis, a five-star hotel with a private beach area, an outdoor swimming pool and tennis courts.
Will Putin be in Turkey for peace talks? The Kremlin’s list suggests not.
Russia on Wednesday released a list of officials who will attend peace talks with Ukraine in Turkey. But a key person was missing: President Vladimir V. Putin.
The absence on the list of the Russian leader, who ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that began the war, was a strong indication that Mr. Putin would not come face to face this week with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who has called him a murderer. The Kremlin said Mr. Putin himself had signed off on the delegation.
President Trump, who began pushing for peace talks before he took back the White House, had said he would consider joining the meeting in Turkey.
“I was thinking about actually flying over there,” Mr. Trump told reporters during a White House news conference on Monday.
But on Wednesday, Mr. Trump, who is on a three-nation tour of the Middle East, indicated that he, too, would skip the talks and would instead visit the United Arab Emirates as planned. But he said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would attend.
“Tomorrow, we’re all booked out, you understand that,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “We’re going to U.A.E. tomorrow. So we have a very full situation. Now that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it to save a lot of lives and come back. But, yeah, I’ve been thinking about it.”
Of Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump added: “I don’t know that he would be there if I’m not there. We’re going to find out. Marco’s going and Marco’s been very effective.” Along with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Trump’s special envoys Steven Witkoff and Keith Kellogg were expected to travel to Turkey.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky said he was “waiting to see who will come from Russia” before deciding what steps Ukraine should take regarding the peace talks. He also urged the “strongest” Western sanctions against Russia if Mr. Putin rejected the meeting.
The Kremlin said that the Russian delegation would be led by Vladimir Medinsky, a hard-line aide to Mr. Putin. It would also include Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin, who was part of the Russian delegation in talks held between Moscow and Kyiv in the weeks after the 2022 invasion; and other senior military and intelligence officials.
Early Thursday, the Russian news agency TASS reported that the closed-door talks would begin at about 10 a.m. local time on Thursday at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. But the head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, denied it.
The stakes could not be higher for both sides in the largest land war in Europe since World War II.
After more than three years of war, Mr. Putin’s stance is that Russia is winning on the battlefield. But analysts estimate Moscow has lost hundreds of thousands of troops to death and injury. Its soldiers and brigades have been so depleted that it turned to North Korea for troops, and Moscow has struggled to replace destroyed equipment, analysts say.
Ukraine, too, has lost troops, but far fewer than Russia, U.S. intelligence believes. Kyiv’s forces, which made an audacious invasion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024, have since pulled out almost entirely. They have also been steadily losing ground in their country’s east.
As Mr. Trump has pushed for talks, Kyiv has stressed that it needs security guarantees from the United States. Ukraine signed a deal last month that gives America a share of future revenues from its reserves of rare earth minerals. But the final deal did not include explicit guarantees of future U.S. security assistance.
As the pressure for peace has grown, the White House said in March that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to cease fighting in the Black Sea and to work on details for halting strikes on energy facilities. Later that month, after meetings were held in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine said it would support a Trump administration proposal for a 30-day cease-fire. That gave new momentum to truce negotiations, which had faltered after a public clash at the White House between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump.
Then, in April, Mr. Putin declared an “Easter truce,” ordering his forces to “stop all military activity” against Ukraine for the holiday. It was apparently aimed at showing an impatient Trump administration that Moscow was still open to peace talks. But Kyiv said Russia broke its own truce.
After Mr. Trump expressed frustration with Russia’s refusal to stop the war, Mr. Putin ordered a three-day cease-fire to begin on May 8, to mark the May 9 celebration of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Mr. Zelensky described that pledge as a “manipulation.”
Then a coalition of European allies gave Russia a deadline this month to agree to a 30-day cease-fire or face new sanctions.
In his post Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky said he was “ready for any format of negotiations” with Russia in Turkey.
“Russia is only prolonging the war and the killings,” he added. “I want to thank every country, every leader who is now putting pressure on Russia, so that the shelling finally stops.”
Cicely Wedgeworth and Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting.
Maggie Haberman and
Why does Trump want a new Air Force One?
President Trump has said the United States needs a more “impressive” Air Force One, on par with the sleek jets he has seen in oil-rich nations in the Middle East.
The two 747-200s that serve as Air Force One now — depending on when the president is on board — are more than 30 years old and were meant to be phased out of service years ago.
Efforts over the last 10 years to replace them have met with repeated delays, and the planes aren’t expected to be finished before Mr. Trump leaves office, though perhaps 2027 at the earliest.
So he has said he plans to accept a Boeing 747-8 known as a “palace in the sky” as a donation from the Qatari royal family to the Pentagon, to then be turned over to his presidential library. The plan — which Qatari officials have said is merely under discussion but not finalized — has drawn immense blowback, including from Republicans, as Mr. Trump has defiantly insisted there’s no problem with it.
The aircraft now serving as Air Force One are safe, but they are timeworn, and airplanes are meant to fly only for a certain amount of time before they need to be retired.
“They are just old airplanes — and airplanes have finite lives,” said Frank Kendall, who until early this year served as the Air Force secretary, and who first started working on contracts to replace the two planes during the Obama administration. “There is no question about it that these planes need to be replaced.”
There are fewer than two dozen 747-200s that fly globally anymore, and spare parts for replacements require work to obtain and often have to be custom made.
Presidential jets tend to last for a few decades. In 1990, the U.S. military began using the 747 jets that still fly today, with three floors of space that include a conference room, as well as specialized communications equipment.
The journey to develop new jets to serve as Air Force One — the call sign for whatever plane the president is traveling aboard — has been long.
It began when President George W. Bush initiated plans for two new presidential aircraft midway through his second term. Mr. Bush had experienced the importance of a functioning presidential aircraft when he and some advisers spent the eight hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks traveling aboard Air Force One around the East Coast, the safest place he could be at the time, as he directed the response.
During President Barack Obama’s tenure, the plans for new planes did not accelerate until his second-to-last year in office. In 2015, the military chose Boeing to deliver 747-8 frames for the new aircraft.
They were to be rebuilt with specifications allowing them to withstand radiation that might be in the air after a nuclear blast and certain types of missile attacks, as well as the ability to refuel while in the air.
The 747 itself cost about $250 million, Mr. Kendall said, but the final Air Force One plane comes with a price tag of at least $2 billion — which Mr. Kendall said illustrates just how comprehensive and time consuming the overhaul of the jet is before it is ready to carry the president.
The work includes building a flying version of the Situation Room inside the plane, a communications system enabling the president to get in touch with any military or political leader in the world, a mini medical clinic, and defensive measures in case there is an enemy missile trying to take it down.
“It’s not just an airplane anymore,” Mr. Kendall said. “It is a flying White House.”
In 2018, with progress on the planes moving slowly, Mr. Trump’s administration granted Boeing a contract — renegotiated from one that had existed under Mr. Obama — for two new 747-8 planes. Instead of building them from scratch, they would use the frames of jets built for a Russian airline that went out of business.
They were to be equipped with military hardening and defense systems, in the hopes that Mr. Trump might be able to fly on them at the end of his first term.
But the coronavirus pandemic helped cause a fresh round of delays. The company that was contracted to produce the specialized interior — not just belt buckles and seats but communications and storage systems — went out of business. Boeing also saw supply line shortages for some parts.
Yet Boeing suffered a string of problems unrelated to the pandemic, as well. Among them, the Federal Aviation Administration identified cracks in frames of Boeing 747-8 planes that required extensive fixes.
All of that has meant the planes that were to be delivered by 2024 are still behind schedule, and may not be ready by the time Mr. Trump leaves office.
That has infuriated Mr. Trump, who once owned an airline shuttle service and knows a great deal about planes, having owned private planes over time. Mr. Trump owns a used 757 airplane known as Trump Force One that has been decorated with gold and mahogany tables.
Its color scheme is blue, red and white — the same colors he wants for the new Air Force One, to replace the familiar robin’s egg blue of the current design. Mr. Trump has traveled around with a model of the new Air Force One since he left office, proudly displaying it in the main room at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida, in the years between his two terms.
But the age of the current Air Force One planes seems to bother Mr. Trump less than the visuals. He believes they don’t possess the level of impressive symbolism of America that he thinks they should, and that the leaders of the oil-rich nations he is currently visiting have nicer planes than the ones he travels on.
“The plane that you’re on right now is almost 40 years old,” Mr. Trump told the Fox News host Sean Hannity during an interview aboard Air Force One as Mr. Trump traveled to the Middle East this week.
“And when you land and you see Saudi Arabia, and you see U.A.E., and you see Qatar and you see all these — and they have these brand-new Boeing 747s mostly, and you see ours next to it, this is like a totally different plane. It’s much smaller. It’s much less impressive, as impressive as it is,” Mr. Trump said.
“And we’re the United States of America. I believe that we should have the most impressive plane,” he said.
But taking possession of a gifted Qatari jet is only the first step of a very complex and lengthy process that would be necessary to prepare it to become a true Air Force One, Mr. Kendall said.
“What they will get is a luxury airplane designed to fly around an emir or some member of the royal family in an opulent flying palace,” he said. “But that is nothing like the capability and unique features of an Air Force One. The Air Force can paint it with the colors that President Trump wants, but it won’t be an Air Force One.”
Trump’s Pledge to the Middle East: No More ‘Lectures on How to Live’
When President Trump declared from the stage of an opulent ballroom in Saudi Arabia that the United States was done nation-building and intervening, that the world’s superpower would no longer be “giving you lectures on how to live,” his audience erupted in applause.
He was effectively denouncing decades of American policy in the Middle East, playing to grievances long aired in cafes and sitting rooms from Morocco to Oman.
“In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday, during a sweeping address at an investment conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. “And the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand.”
He urged the people of the region to chart “your own destinies in your own way.”
Reactions to his speech spread swiftly on mobile phone screens in a Middle East where the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan — and more recently, U.S. support for Israel as it intensifies its war in Gaza, which is on the brink of starvation — are ingrained in public consciousness and criticized by monarchists and dissidents alike.
Sultan Alamer, aSaudi academic, joked that Mr. Trump’s remarks sounded like they came from Frantz Fanon, a 20th century Marxist thinker who wrote about the dynamics of colonial oppression. Syrians posted celebratory memes when Mr. Trump announced that he would end American sanctions on their war-ravaged country “in order to give them a chance at greatness.”
And in Yemen — another country mired in war and subject to American sanctions — Abdullatif Mohammed implied agreement with Mr. Trump’s notion of sovereignty, even as he expressed frustration with U.S. intervention.
“When will countries recognize us and let us live like the rest of the world?” Mr. Mohammed, a 31-year-old restaurant manager in the capital, Sana, said when asked about the speech. American airstrikes pounded his city under both former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Trump, targeting the Iran-backed Houthi militia, until Mr. Trump abruptly declared a cease-fire this month.
“Who is Trump to grant pardons, lift sanctions on a country, or impose them?” Mr. Mohammed said. “But that’s how the world works.”
Mr. Trump’s remarks came at the start of a four-day jaunt through three wealthy Gulf Arab states: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He was focused in large part on business deals, including more than $1 trillion in investment in the United States pledged by the three Gulf governments.
But his address in Riyadh made clear that he had broader diplomatic ambitions for his trip. He expressed a “fervent wish” that Saudi Arabia follow two neighbors, the Emirates and Bahrain, to recognize the state of Israel. (Saudi officials have said that will happen only after the establishment of a Palestinian state.) He said he had a keen desire to reach a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, adding that he “never believed in having permanent enemies.”
And on Wednesday, he met the new leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara — a former jihadist who led a rebel alliance that ousted the brutal strongman Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Trump posed for a photograph with Mr. al-Shara and the Saudi crown prince in an image that dropped jaws in the region and beyond.
“Dude, what happened is truly unbelievable,” said Mr. Mohammed, the Yemeni restaurant manager.
Mr. Trump’s address was a sometimes-rambling speech that lasted more than 40 minutes.
In Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, he neglected to mention that he has said before that “Islam hates us” and that the Quran teaches “some very negative vibe.” Instead, he praised the kingdom’s heritage.
His friendliness in front of the Saudi crowd stood in contrast to Mr. Biden’s chillier approach to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler who directed a yearslong bombing campaign in Yemen and has overseen a widespread crackdown on dissent. When Mr. Biden visited Saudi Arabia, he said that he told the crown prince he believed he was responsible for the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist critical of the royal family’s rule.
Mr. Trump instead heaped plaudits on the Arabian Peninsula and Prince Mohammed, calling him an “incredible man.”
“In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins,” Mr. Trump said.
His remarks left some Arab listeners worried about what the potential evaporation of American pressure over human rights violations could mean for their countries.
Ibrahim Almadi is the son of a 75-year-old American-Saudi dual national who was arrested in the kingdom over critical social media posts; his father was released but is not allowed to leave Saudi Arabia. In an interview, Mr. Almadi said he had hoped Mr. Trump would speak to Saudi officials about his father’s case during his visit — and that he had tried without success to reach out to officials across his administration. He sees it as the type of human rights violation that previous U.S. administrations would have pressed Saudi officials on.
“They are normalizing my dad’s case, which is not normal,” he said of the Trump administration.
A White House spokeswoman did not answer questions about whether the president or his aides had raised human rights issues with Saudi officials. Asked about the reaction to his address, the spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, said, “The president has received widespread praise for his speech.”
Abdullah Alaoudh, a member of a Saudi opposition party in exile and the son of a prominent cleric imprisoned in the kingdom, called the speech a public relations stunt for the benefit of Prince Mohammed.
He added that he found it ironic that Mr. Trump was praising a Middle East built “by the people of the region” when he was speaking to an audience dotted with foreign billionaires and “in front of an authoritarian leader who has brutally silenced all dissent.”
In the ballroom in Riyadh, Mr. Trump received a standing ovation.
“The president’s speech was actually quite consequential,” Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said at a news conference on Wednesday, describing it as an “approach of partnership, of mutual respect.”
Mr. Alamer, a senior resident fellow at the New Lines Institute, a Washington research group, said in an interview that the president’s words reflected themes “that are normally associated with leftist and anti-imperialist intellectuals.”
“While this is surprising in the sense that we, as Arabs, used to be the subject of American lecturing and interventionism, it is also not surprising when we consider that new right-wing populist movements — both in the Gulf and the U.S. — have borrowed some of this rhetoric from leftists and socialists and repurposed it to advance a conservative worldview,” said Mr. Alamer.
Negad el-Boraie, a prominent Egyptian human rights lawyer, said he was reluctant to read much into Mr. Trump’s speech, given that he was in Saudi Arabia primarily to talk about investments.
But for Mr. el-Boraie, Mr. Trump was merely being honest about what U.S. presidents had always really cared about — American interests — regardless of how much previous presidents draped their agendas in comments about human rights and democracy.
“The U.S. prioritizes its own interests,” he said. “Trump expresses his opinions frankly, and that’s clear in all his speeches.”
Shuaib Almosawa contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen; Rania Khaled from Cairo; Ismaeel Naar from Dubai; Hwaida Saad and Jacob Roubai from Beirut; and Muhammad Haj Kadour from Damascus.