Afrasianet - Ibrahim Alloush - It doesn't matter if Trump talks about deals worth two trillion dollars, or three trillion, when their value is less than three-quarters of a trillion, because the intended trillions are aimed at garnering billions of likes from America and internationally. 

A report on the Atlantic Council website, on 13/5/2025, regarding President Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, insists that the goal of the visit is summarized in two things:

(a) Making giant business deals.

(b) "Gaining the upper hand in the ongoing trade confrontation and technological competition with China."

The Atlantic Council report, citing sources involved in planning Trump's visit, says that the biggest focus in that planning was on making deals, and that the Trump administration prefers to swim in the tide of Gulf investments rather than drown in the whirlpool of the region's problems.

We also understand from the Atlantic Council report that Gulf money is supposed to be used in competition with China, both commercially and technologically, and that promises to transfer advanced technology, such as American semiconductors, to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are linked to polarizing the two countries away from China, under the pretext of preventing the leakage of that technology to it.  

For example, the Emirati artificial intelligence company G42  severed ties with its Chinese partners in order to forge partnerships with their American alternatives.  It is noteworthy that this company officially announced the establishment of a joint venture with the military manufacturing company in the Zionist entity, "Raphael", on 21/4/2021, to market artificial intelligence and big data technology.  

The general idea is to employ Gulf capital in huge American investments, some in the field of artificial intelligence, under the title of "localizing technology in the Gulf", in order to win the race with China.  

For this purpose, the Trump administration will lift the ban on the supply of some advanced American semiconductors to Saudi Arabia and the UAE (Poland, India, Mexico, the Zionist entity and others) in partnership with the United States, with  the new Saudi artificial intelligence company Humain, for example, which allows China to overtake China in forging a closer relationship with Gulf rulers than China despite the latter being the largest customer of their fossil fuels, according to the Atlantic Council report.   

If the assessment is correct that the trade dimension, and after the concerted competition with China, are the two dimensions that bend the two ends of the arc under which Trump's visit to the Gulf countries passed, then what happened, or did not happen, politically, on the sidelines of that visit, it becomes necessary to read it from the angle of his efforts to blackmail the Gulf countries financially, and distance them from China geopolitically.

Perhaps the most important thing that Trump presented to the Gulf countries here was mentioned in his speech at the Saudi-American Investment Forum in Riyadh, according to excerpts published on the White House website on 13/5/2025, regarding the future of the "Middle East", especially condemning the quest of neoconservatives, or non-profit liberal associations, to teach others how to manage their affairs and how to govern their country.    

This means that the US administration should abandon the attempt to change the regimes of those countries under the pretext of "democracy and human rights", and let them run as it sees fit for their circumstances, for example, but not limited to, not to provoke media whirlwinds regarding cases such as the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  

It is not clear whether this shift will apply only to the regimes of countries that the US administration sees as necessary to maintain their stability, or whether it will also apply to independent countries or those opposed to American hegemony, but it has certainly shifted the direction of US foreign policy, away from the direction of the Biden and Obama administrations, and even the Bush administration.  

It is not wise for the United States to build a strategy to bypass China, and cut its path and belt, on long-term investments with parties that the US administration intends to undermine, at least in the foreseeable future, and there is no security for American policy.

Another element is Trump's new vision of the geographical space that colonialism called the "Middle East," as we read in his speech in Riyadh, and in the general context: 

Focus on achieving U.S. interests, rather than trying to impose "American values." 

(b) Focus on political stability, rather than creating "chaos," as Trump literally said (as if he almost added "creative," because his remarks directly targeted neoconservatives and foreign-funded NGOs.

C- Focusing on economic prosperity, under American auspices, away from China, of course, and in cooperation with the Zionist entity under the banner of the "Abraham Accords".

The last point was made clear by what Trump said in his speech in Riyadh: "If the responsible nations of this region seize this moment, put aside their differences and focus on the interests that unite them, all of humanity will soon be amazed at what you will see here in this geographic center of the world... and the spiritual heart of his greatest beliefs."

The story of more Arab and Muslim countries joining the Abraham Accords remains on the agenda, and therefore the need to create the best conditions for their inclusion in those agreements by writing off and domesticating resistance tendencies, and trying to subjugate Iran with a mixture of intimidation and carrot.  

With the exception of the direct invasion and occupation, it is premature, within the current data, to rush to conclude that the military option has been removed from the list of options for dealing with Iran, or the option of trying to cause internal unrest in it, or the establishment of a "Middle Eastern NATO" to contain it, similar to the "Baghdad Pact" in the fifties against Nasser's Egypt, but under a sectarian banner.  

Trump's meeting with Abu Muhammad al-Julani can also be read from this angle: keeping Iran away from Syria and establishing an official Arab-Turkish alliance to confront it, although the meeting was held under the auspices of Mohammed bin Salman, instead of Recep bin Erdogan, favored the former over the latter, Syria and regionally.  

But the first is the one who can give Trump hundreds of billions of dollars, and it seems that he is the candidate to be his regional dependent, while the second seeks to transform from a regional power to an international power by playing the ropes of US-Russian contradictions, and to play a mediating role on the Ukrainian stage, but they are ropes that fell far short after the rapprochement between Presidents Trump and Putin.  

He hints from what has been suggested in the media that the absence of Putin and Trump from the Istanbul negotiations on Ukraine came with a Russian-American understanding.  Why do they give Zelensky more weight than he is in their presence, when he is required to feel weak in order to make concessions to end the war?  

However, the effect of their absence remains to objectively weaken the Turkish regime's mediation and write off its efforts to broker an international deal.  Trump was unlikely to come to Istanbul if negotiations were not to produce a deal to end the Ukrainian war for what Zelensky is yet preparing for.       

Trump's reference to the suffering of Gazans during his Gulf visit, on the other hand, and his failure to visit the Zionist entity on the way, back or forth, and his bypassing Netanyahu in making a direct deal to release the prisoner Idan Alexander, while he was on his way to Saudi Arabia, is read to two things, in my humble opinion:

A- Trump's realization, with the businessman's sense, of the need not to embarrass his Gulf customers, with whom he seeks to make deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars.  It is a tactical maneuver that does not affect Trump's commitment to include everyone in the Abraham Accords, as we saw from his speech in Saudi Arabia, or in his meeting with al-Julani, and his commitment to the security of the Zionist enemy and its financial, intelligence and military support for resources, some of which come from Arab regimes.

B- Trump's realization, with the businessman's sense, that Netanyahu and his team are playing with a strict ideological logic, while Trump, a pragmatist, wanted Netanyahu, who is dependent on a difficult alliance in his government, to ease the pressure on Gaza during his Gulf visit, and for Netanyahu, in general, to harmonize with Trump in shifting his position 180 degrees when necessary, or in raising or reducing escalation in a certain direction.  Therefore, he had to be taught an "educational" lesson.

This is not the first time that Trump has undermined Netanyahu's status as Israelis and regionally, and we have already seen Trump respond disappointed during his visit to Washington last April over tariffs on Israeli products.  

This does not mean that the Trump administration abandons the Zionist entity, but rather that Trump has the game of "image politics", that is, engineering impressions and broadcasting them to the American interior that he is the owner of the solution and linkage, and producing impressions among the Arabs, regimes and nation, that he is working under the inspiration of the American interest, not under the control of the Zionist movement, even as he invites them to join the chorus of normalization with the Zionist enemy, or employs their resources in the service of that enemy.  

It is a matter of marketing, and it will not be long before he issues other contrary impressions towards the Zionist entity or the American Jews, when he finds it appropriate, and even issued them before his arrival in Saudi Arabia.  Some may think that he scored points by making a deal with Trump to release Idan Alexander (free, as the Trump administration says) behind Netanyahu's back, but that, from the point of view of the "image policy" administration, achieved two things for Trump:

A- Highlighting his "might" personally, and the American might, in obtaining something in exchange for nothing, just to appease him, if we assume that the release of Idan Alexander was not one of the prices paid Qatarially for Trump's sitting with Al-Julani, in addition to commercial deals and the commission of the presidential plane of $ 400 million.

(b) Strengthening bargaining tendencies, at the expense of that resistance, in the Palestinian issue, just as happened with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which gasped for "American recognition" until it lost its essence.  From Qatar, which hosts Hamas' political bureau, Trump condemned the glorious "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation again, and spoke of turning Gaza into an American-sponsored "freedom zone" and that Hamas "must deal with it," a statement that may have a dual military or political meaning, depending on the listener's desire, but means, at best, the political domestication of Hamas in exchange for "American recognition."  

It was not surprising that Trump tried to marginalize the issue of aggression on Gaza in his quest to blackmail hundreds of billions from the Gulf countries, but rather surprising is the willingness of the Gulf countries to grant it to him in light of the aggression on Gaza. 

The US media is skeptical of Trump's announced figures for his deals in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which he claimed amounted to trillions of dollars.  See, for example, the Reuters report on 16/5/2025, "What are the Gulf trillions that Trump says will boost the US economy?", which showed that the agency's calculations show that the deals actually made amounted to more than $700 billion only.  

The New York Times, for its part, reported on 16/5/2025 that there are exaggerations in the values of the announced deals, such as  the Boeing aircraft deal for Qatar, which Trump said was worth $ 200 billion, while a White House report showed that its value is $ 96 billion, and many of the alleged "trillions" came in the form of initial "memorandums of understanding" that are not legally binding.  

A report on CNN, on 16/5/2025, entitled "What the Gulf Arab states got, and what they did not get, from Trump's visit", stated that Saudi Arabia wanted a security protection agreement with the United States, and the right to enrich uranium, but did not get them, with a hint that the obstacle is its delay in officially joining the "Abraham Accords".  But it has committed to investing $600 billion in the U.S. economy, including a $142 billion defense partnership deal that "could pave the way for a broader agreement."

A report by the Associated Press, for its part, on 13/5/2025, pointed out that the three countries Trump is visiting are active in the "Trump Organization", that is, his trading company run by his sons, in the construction of large real estate projects: a tower in Jeddah, a luxury hotel in Dubai, a golf course and a "villa complex" in Qatar, hinting at a possible conflict of interest between Trump's role as president and his role as the owner of a huge real estate company.

On his Gulf visit, Trump brought with him a whole column of CEOs of major American companies, as we have seen.  The lesson here is to understand that as a president who takes care of their interests and that their loyalty, and all the influence they have, must be thrown behind him and his political project, especially since most of the trade deals and memorandums of understanding were signed in the Gulf with these companies, but within the general strategic framework drawn by the Trump administration, and under its supervision, especially in sensitive sectors such as the arms industry and advanced semiconductors.

It is not important that Trump talks about deals worth two trillion dollars, three trillion, or four, while their value is less than three-quarters of a trillion, because the intended trillions aim to garner billions of likes in America and internationally, by managing the "image policy" to market Trump personally and his project to restore US hegemony vis-à-vis China.