U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump kicked off a four-day Mid­dle East trip on Tues­day in Sau­di Ara­bia, putting the fo­cus on seal­ing eco­nom­ic agree­ments with a key Mideast al­ly while shared con­cerns about Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram and the war in Gaza bub­ble in the back­ground.

Crown Prince Mo­hammed bin Salman, the Sau­di de fac­to ruler, warm­ly greet­ed Trump as he stepped off Air Force One at King Khalid In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in the Sau­di cap­i­tal. The two lead­ers then re­treat­ed to a grand hall at the Riyadh air­port, where Trump and his aides were served tra­di­tion­al Ara­bic cof­fee by wait­ing at­ten­dants wear­ing cer­e­mo­ni­al gun belts.

“I re­al­ly be­lieve we like each oth­er a lot,” Trump said lat­er dur­ing a brief ap­pear­ance with the crown prince at the start of a bi­lat­er­al meet­ing.

Prince Mo­hammed has al­ready com­mit­ted to some $600 bil­lion in new Sau­di in­vest­ment in the U.S., but Trump teased $1 tril­lion would be even bet­ter.

Fight­er jet es­cort

The pomp be­gan be­fore Trump even land­ed. Roy­al Sau­di Air Force F-15s pro­vid­ed an hon­orary es­cort for Air Force One as it ap­proached the king­dom’s cap­i­tal.

Trump and Prince Mo­hammed al­so took part in a lunch at the Roy­al Court, gath­er­ing with guests and aides in an or­nate room with blue ac­cents and mas­sive crys­tal chan­de­liers.

As he greet­ed busi­ness ti­tans with Trump by his side, Prince Mo­hammed was an­i­mat­ed and smil­ing.

It was a stark con­trast to his awk­ward fist bump with then-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who looked to avoid be­ing seen on cam­era shak­ing hands with the prince dur­ing a 2022 vis­it to the king­dom.

Biden had de­cid­ed to pay a vis­it to Sau­di Ara­bia as he looked to al­le­vi­ate soar­ing prices at the pump for mo­torists at home and around the globe. At the time, Prince Mo­hammed’s rep­u­ta­tion had been bad­ly dam­aged by a U.S. in­tel­li­gence de­ter­mi­na­tion that found he had or­dered the 2018 killing of jour­nal­ist Ja­mal Khashog­gi.

But that dark mo­ment ap­peared to be dis­tant mem­o­ry for the prince as he rubbed el­bows with high-pro­file busi­ness ex­ec­u­tives — in­clud­ing Black­stone Group CEO Stephen Schwarz­man, Black­Rock CEO Lar­ry Fink and Tes­la and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — in front of the cam­eras and with Trump by his side.

Lat­er, the crown prince will fete Trump with a for­mal din­ner. Trump is al­so slat­ed to take part Tues­day in a U.S.-Sau­di in­vest­ment con­fer­ence.

Oil pro­duc­tion

Sau­di Ara­bia and fel­low OPEC+ na­tions have al­ready helped their cause with Trump ear­ly in his sec­ond term by step­ping up oil pro­duc­tion. Trump sees cheap en­er­gy as a key com­po­nent to low­er­ing costs and stem­ming in­fla­tion for Amer­i­cans. The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent has al­so made the case that low­er oil prices will has­ten an end to the Rus­sia-Ukraine war.

But Sau­di Ara­bia’s econ­o­my re­mains heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on oil, and the king­dom needs a fis­cal break-even oil price of $96 to $98 a bar­rel to bal­ance its bud­get. It’s ques­tion­able how long OPEC+, of which Sau­di Ara­bia is the lead­ing mem­ber, is will­ing to keep pro­duc­tion el­e­vat­ed. The price of a bar­rel of Brent crude closed Mon­day at $64.77.

“One of the chal­lenges for the Gulf states of low­er oil prices is it doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly im­per­il eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion pro­grams, but it cer­tain­ly makes them hard­er,” said Jon Al­ter­man, a se­nior Mid­dle East an­a­lyst at the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies in Wash­ing­ton.

Qatar and UAE next

Trump picked the king­dom for his first stop, be­cause it has pledged to make big in­vest­ments in the U.S., but Trump end­ed up trav­el­ing to Italy last month for Pope Fran­cis’ fu­ner­al. Riyadh was the first over­seas stop of his first term.

The three coun­tries on the pres­i­dent’s itin­er­ary — Sau­di Ara­bia, Qatar and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates — are all places where the Trump Or­ga­ni­za­tion, run by Trump’s two el­der sons, is de­vel­op­ing ma­jor re­al es­tate projects. They in­clude a high-rise tow­er in Jed­dah, a lux­u­ry ho­tel in Dubai and a golf course and vil­la com­plex in Qatar.

Trump is try­ing to demon­strate that his trans­ac­tion­al strat­e­gy for in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics is pay­ing div­i­dends as he faces crit­i­cism from De­moc­rats who say his glob­al tar­iff war and ap­proach to Rus­sia’s war on Ukraine are iso­lat­ing the Unit­ed States from al­lies.

He’s ex­pect­ed to an­nounce deals with the three wealthy coun­tries that will touch on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, ex­pand­ing en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion and per­haps new arms sales to Sau­di Ara­bia. The ad­min­is­tra­tion ear­li­er this month an­nounced ini­tial ap­proval to sell $3.5 bil­lion worth of air-to-air mis­siles for Sau­di Ara­bia’s fight­er jets.

But Trump ar­rived in the Mid­dle East at a mo­ment when his top re­gion­al al­lies, Is­rael and Sau­di Ara­bia, are far from neat­ly aligned with his ap­proach.

Trump’s de­ci­sion to skip Is­rael re­mark­able, ex­pert says

Be­fore the trip, Trump an­nounced that Wash­ing­ton was halt­ing a near­ly two-month U.S. airstrike cam­paign against Yemen’s Houthis, say­ing the Iran-backed rebels have pledged to stop at­tack­ing ships along a vi­tal glob­al trade route.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion didn’t no­ti­fy Is­rael — which the Houthis con­tin­ue to tar­get — of the agree­ment be­fore Trump pub­licly an­nounced it. It was the lat­est ex­am­ple of Trump leav­ing the Is­raelis in the dark about his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ne­go­ti­a­tions with com­mon ad­ver­saries.

In March, Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu wasn’t no­ti­fied by the ad­min­is­tra­tion un­til af­ter talks be­gan with Hamas about the war in Gaza. And Ne­tanyahu found out about the on­go­ing U.S. nu­clear talks with Iran on­ly when Trump an­nounced them dur­ing an Oval Of­fice vis­it by the Is­raeli leader last month.

“Is­rael will de­fend it­self by it­self,” Ne­tanyahu said last week fol­low­ing Trump’s Houthi truce an­nounce­ment. “If oth­ers join us — our Amer­i­can friends — all the bet­ter.”

William Wech­sler, se­nior di­rec­tor of the Rafik Hariri Cen­ter and Mid­dle East Pro­grams at the At­lantic Coun­cil, said Trump’s de­ci­sion to skip Is­rael on his first Mid­dle East vis­it is re­mark­able.

“The main mes­sage com­ing out of this, at least as the itin­er­ary stands to­day, is that the gov­ern­ments of the Gulf … are in fact stronger friends to Pres­i­dent Trump than the cur­rent gov­ern­ment of Is­rael at this mo­ment,” Wech­sler said.

Restart­ing ef­forts to nor­mal­ize Is­rael-Sau­di ties

Trump, mean­while, hopes to restart his first-term ef­fort to nor­mal­ize re­la­tions be­tween the Mid­dle East’s ma­jor pow­ers, Is­rael and Sau­di Ara­bia. Trump’s Abra­ham Ac­cords ef­fort led to Su­dan, the UAE, Bahrain and Mo­roc­co agree­ing to nor­mal­ize re­la­tions with Is­rael.

But Riyadh has made clear that in ex­change for nor­mal­iza­tion it wants U.S. se­cu­ri­ty guar­an­tees, as­sis­tance with the king­dom’s nu­clear pro­gram and progress on a path­way to Pales­tin­ian state­hood. There seems to be scant hope for mak­ing head­way on a Pales­tin­ian state with the Is­rael-Hamas war rag­ing and the Is­raelis threat­en­ing to flat­ten and oc­cu­py Gaza.

Prince Mo­hammed last week no­tably host­ed Pales­tin­ian Vice Pres­i­dent Hus­sein al-Sheikh in Jed­dah on the of­fi­cial’s first for­eign vis­it since as­sum­ing of­fice in April.

Hus­sain Ab­dul-Hus­sain, a re­search fel­low at the Foun­da­tion for De­fense of Democ­ra­cies, said the crown prince ap­peared to be sub­tly sig­nal­ing to Trump that the king­dom needs to see progress on Pales­tin­ian state­hood for the Saud­is to be­gin se­ri­ous­ly mov­ing on a nor­mal­iza­tion deal with the Is­raelis.