Foreign Policy
What Is the US Relationship with Saudi Arabia and Why Does It Matter?
The US-Saudi Arabian relationship is possibly the most morally uncomfortable major alliance in American foreign policy. And it is one of the most durable.
Understanding why requires separating what each party actually gets from the partnership.
The Deal As It Actually Exists
What the US gets:
- Saudi Arabia maintains oil production at levels that help keep global energy markets stable
- Access to Saudi Arabia's massive sovereign wealth fund as a financial partner
- Base rights and military cooperation in the Gulf region
- Counter-terrorism intelligence cooperation (imperfect and complicated, but real)
- Saudi purchasing of US weapons systems — billions in arms deals that support US defense industry and jobs
- Saudi cooperation with US dollar-denominated oil trade (the "petrodollar" system)
What Saudi Arabia gets:
- US military protection, including from Iran — the primary security threat to the Saudi monarchy
- Access to US weapons, training, and military technology
- Political protection at the UN and in international forums
- Technology cooperation
- Investment and financial access to US markets
Neither side particularly likes the other. The US government knows Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with a brutal human rights record that spawned 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers. Saudi Arabia knows the US lectures it about human rights while taking its money and selling it bombs.
The relationship continues because both sides have concluded the alternatives are worse.
The Khashoggi Line They Didn't Cross
In October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi — a Saudi journalist living in the US and writing for the Washington Post — walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Saudi operatives killed him inside the consulate and dismembered his body.
US intelligence services concluded with high confidence that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) — the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia — approved the operation.
Trump's response: a statement declining to formally hold MBS accountable, citing the "tremendous amount of investment" and "hundreds of billions of dollars" in Saudi spending in the US.
Biden, who called Saudi Arabia a "pariah state" during his campaign, ultimately met with MBS and continued arms sales — though he declassified the intelligence assessment naming MBS and imposed some sanctions on lower-level participants.
The message to the world: if you have enough oil and enough money to buy American weapons, the US will not hold you accountable for murdering an American-resident journalist.
That is a real cost to US credibility on human rights, democracy promotion, and rule of law. Both parties have demonstrated they are willing to pay it.
The Saudi-Israel Deal and What Trump Is Offering
The biggest active diplomatic effort in US-Saudi relations is the potential normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Saudi requirements have included: a US mutual defense treaty (essentially a NATO-style commitment), civilian nuclear technology assistance including uranium enrichment, and some form of advancement toward Palestinian statehood.
The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and Gaza war complicated the Palestinian statehood piece enormously. But Trump's team — led by Jared Kushner's family real estate connections and Steve Witkoff as special envoy — has pursued a framework where Saudi Arabia receives the defense treaty and nuclear assistance without requiring formal Palestinian statehood, in exchange for normalization with Israel.
Whether this framework succeeds depends on whether domestic Saudi politics allow MBS to normalize with Israel while Gaza is still being bombed. It also depends on whether the US Senate would ratify a mutual defense treaty — which would commit US forces to Saudi defense by treaty obligation, a politically complicated commitment given Saudi Arabia's human rights record.
The deal, if it happens, would reshape Middle Eastern geopolitics. The price, as always in the US-Saudi relationship, involves looking away from things that are hard to look away from.