Saudi Arabia eyes defence deal with US after signing pact with Pakistan: report

WASHINGTON: Saudi Arabia is discussing a defence deal with the United States which it hopes to seal when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visits the White House next month, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

A senior Trump administration official told the foreign media outlet there were discussions about signing something when the crown prince comes but the details are in flux. The report said the deal in discussion was similar to the recent US-Qatar pact that pledged to treat any armed attack on Qatar as a threat to the United States. The US deal with Qatar came after Israel last month attempted to kill leaders of Hamas with an air strike on Doha.

The US State Department told the media outlet that defence cooperation with the kingdom was a strong bedrock of our regional strategy but declined to comment on details of the potential deal.

The US State Department, the White House and the Saudi government did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the FT report.

Last month Pakistan and Saudi Arabia entered into a landmark mutual defence agreement under which any aggression against one state will be considered an attack on both. The pact was signed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman at the Al Yamamah Palace in Riyadh.

Meanwhile, United States President Donald Trump has said he expected an expansion of the Abraham Accords soon and hopes Saudi Arabia will join the pact that normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab states.

“I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in,” Trump said in an interview broadcast on Friday on Fox Business Network.

“I think that they’re going to all go in very soon,” Trump said in the interview, which was recorded on Thursday.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the accords in 2020 during Trump’s first term in the White House, breaking a longstanding taboo to become the first Arab states to recognise Israel in a quarter century. Morocco and Sudan followed suit.

Trump, who convened Muslim and European leaders in Egypt to discuss the future of the Gaza Strip on Monday, has presented his plan to end the war in Gaza as the catalyst for a wider regional peace settlement.

He said then that more countries would join the Abraham Accords initiative and even floated the idea of a peace deal between arch Middle East enemies Iran and Israel, telling the Israeli parliament he thought Iran wanted one: “Wouldn’t it be nice?”