Our weekly briefing on what’s driving events in the Middle East and Washington

By Joe Kawly, Aya Elbaz, Ezat Wagdi, and Cheyn Shah

Welcome back to the MBN Agenda. Every Tuesday – before dawn in Washington, in the early afternoon in the Middle East – we give our audiences in the Arab world and beyond the indispensable skinny on the region’s biggest stories.

Today, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince comes to see Donald Trump at the White House. We break down the stakes and preview the show today. Follow our flagship Arabic-language Alhurra platform for updates on Muhammad Bin Salman’s visit. 

Also this week, the outcome of Iraq’s parliamentary elections, Washington’s push in Lebanon against Hezbollah and Qatar’s higher education boom. 

Send tips and feedback to us at mbnagenda@mbn-news.com. Read the Arabic version of MBN Agenda. If you were forwarded this newsletter, subscribe here. 

– Joe, Aya, Ezat and Cheyn

Top of The News

America’s Gaza Move at UN

Less than a day before MBS lands in Washington, the U.S. got a diplomatic win at the United Nations on Gaza, pushing through a resolution yesterday endorsing President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.

With Russia and China abstaining, the Security Council authorized an international stabilization force for the enclave. The resolution gives international legitimacy to Trump’s 20-point Gaza roadmap agreed last month and opens the way for the creation of a new “Peace Council” that would oversee Gaza’s reconstruction and transition.

The parties to the ceasefire were less than enthusiastic. Hamas rejected the decision, calling it “international guardianship over Gaza.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his opposition to any plan that leaves the door open to a Palestinian state, as this resolution appears to.

Mike Waltz, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, said this is a “significant step towards a stable Gaza,” mentioning Turkey and several Arab and Islamic states, including Pakistan, that supported the measure.

The upshot here? The next steps will be hard, but Washington now thinks it has extra ammunition to press allies, including Saudi Arabia, to join this effort. Which takes us to our main event today…

One New Thing

Not-State State Visit

In his first trip to Washington in seven years, MBS’s “working meeting” will come with all the fixings: a South Lawn welcome at 11 am, with military honors and cannon shots. Then they’ll hold bilateral talks in the Oval Office – the first since the Gaza ceasefire – and have lunch. The state dinner-in-all-but name will be at the White House at 7PM.

Trump hasn’t had a state visit yet in his second term. The fact that MBS – who technically can’t be hosted as the head of state is because the role is his father the king – is getting that kind of treatment says a lot about America’s priorities in the Middle East.

For the Saudis, the visit marks a kind of reputational comeback, following the 2018 assassination ordered by Riyadh of Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. The business of the day will, in large part, be business. A flurry of deals is expected. The Saudis are angling for the bleeding edge of American technology: AI chips. F-35 jets. Nuclear cooperation – and maybe a spot under the nuclear umbrella. Trump will press for the Kingdom to make peace with Israel and sign the Abraham Accords.

The MBS fly-in should resonate across the region. Sudan hopes for a joint commitment to ending its civil war. Israel – and people in Gaza – are watching to see if Saudi Arabia throws its weight behind the ceasefire and supports the reconstruction and stabilization push.

What to Watch For

ur Cheyn Shah reached out to Bernard Haykel, a longtime Saudi watcher and Princeton academic who speaks to MBS regularly. Here’s his take on what to watch for.

Contrast in styles – including about each other: Trump is often effusively positive about MBS, saying in May that he likes him “too much.” MBS hasn’t publicly reciprocated, Haykel notes, adding that “I’ve never seen MBS say anything other than that he respects Trump, and that’s it.”

Saudi top priority: Vision 2030: The era of the Kingdom’s bottomless coffers is over. Saudi Arabia may have the energy wealth, but unlike his peers in the UAE and Qatar, MBS has to worry about how to keep a young and fast-growing population employed and fed. “The big thing is the domestic vision and everything flows from that,” Haykel says. As much as the Saudi leader wants warm relations with America, he keeps the closest eye on keeping his Vision 2030 transformation plan funded.

Biggest hurdle to normalization with Israel. The Biden administration almost had a deal with Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords when the Hamas attack on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza blew that up. Trump wants to revive the talks, raising the issue with MBS in a call last week, according to Axios.

The Saudis insist talks can’t start until Israel agrees to a roadmap to a Palestinian state – something that Netanyahu refuses to do. But the logic for a Saudi-Israel peace is unchanged. Both fear Iranian influence. Both want stability in the region. Both want to keep political Islam down. Both are reliant on the U.S. for their security.

What could unfreeze these talks? The implementation of Phase II of the Gaza ceasefire, which calls for a multinational force and reconstruction fund in Gaza, could signal to the Saudis that Israel is committed to the process Trump has laid out, according to Haykel. That’s why the UN vote yesterday matters.

Talk of a security guarantee, but less firm than Saudis once hoped for. The Biden administration had hoped to get a defense treaty through Congress. The more likely outcome is a presidential executive order, like the one Qatar got. While those may not survive his administration, they’re better than nothing. Saudis are seeing bipartisan support in Washington, which will “outlast or outlive” Trump, says Haykel.

The Saudis want a full-spectrum nuclear program, but no weapons. Saudi Arabia doesn’t want a nuke, says Haykel – at least not until Iran has one. One possible outcome of an American defense guarantee is for Saudi Arabia to be put under the American nuclear umbrella, with missiles stationed in-country, like in Turkey or Germany.

A U.S. booster – and AI true believer. Saudi Arabia has the cheap energy, abundant land and minimal regulation and plenty of capital to become an AI data center hub, as was agreed during Trump’s spring visit to the region. MBS is setting his sights higher than this, says Haykel. The Saudi ruler thinks Americans “have the best technology,” which will “allow his economy to leapfrog ahead of others.” Expect more announcements this week on tech investments.

Signals

In this section, we decipher Washington’s diplomacy toward the Middle East.

Iraq’s Choice

Iraqis gave the most votes last week to incumbent Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to stay in power, our Ghassan Taqi reports. The U.S. wants him to as well. But that doesn’t mean he will.

Washington made its preferences clear. Two days after the November 11 vote, Mark Safaya, President Trump’s newly appointed special envoy for Iraq, congratulated Iraqis and singled out Sudani for leading a “peaceful and sovereign” process. Safaya and Sudani have developed a visible rapport, underscored by a video that surfaced showing the envoy celebrating his birthday with the prime minister inside Baghdad’s government palace.

But a few things stand in Sudani’s way. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — once Sudani’s mentor — is said to have placed a veto on his return, and Iran-aligned militias that gained seats in parliament share that view. Their rivalry is personal and political: Both men draw from the same Shia power base, so any rise in Sudani’s popularity comes at Maliki’s expense.

A senior Iraqi government adviser told MBN that U.S. support remains a “crucial factor” for any contender seeking to form a government. “What decides the next prime minister is not America’s preference,” he said, “it’s the alliances built inside parliament after the vote.”

The next government — and Iraq’s next prime minister — will emerge from the same uneasy tug-of-war that has defined Iraqi politics for two decades: the struggle between U.S. influence and Iranian leverage, between numbers on paper and power in the shadows.

America’s Push in Lebanon

U.S. diplomacy in Beirut is entering a new phase, following Sebastian Gorka’s visit to Lebanon last week, according to officials in Washington and Beirut who spoke to the Agenda’s Joe Kawly.

In their private meetings with Lebanese leaders and in the follow up, the U.S. pushed harder than it indicated in the public statements to weaken Hezbollah. Start with the economy. While steps to change banking regulations and strengthen counter-terror financing rules were announced, the Americans privately told the Lebanese that no one linked to Hezbollah or its political block can hold a leadership position overseeing the Lebanese economy, our sources say.

In Conversation

What Sharaa Achieved in Washington

Over the past week, the Agenda’s Ezat Wagdi tracked how Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit shifted Washington’s tone on the Caesar Act, which sanctions Syria.

The key turning point: His meeting with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, who had been seen as an obstacle to meaningful sanctions relief. Afterward, Mast told Jewish Insider that he would reconsider his position, moving from outright rejection to an openness to discussion.

Congress will hold hearings this Thursday on the Caesar Act, and we’ll get a better sense of the mood there. Fared al-Madhaan (“Caesar”), whose documentation of the Assad regime’s torture led to the legislative sanctions in 2019, will testify. Along with Rabbi Yousef Hamra, representing the Syrian Jewish community, and U.S.-based Syrian activist Myrna Barq of “Syrian Christians for Peace.”

James Jeffrey, former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor and Trump’s first-term Syria envoy, says Washington is looking for tools to deploy in Syria that are more flexible than sanctions. In his view, al-Sharaa’s visit “restarted the conversation” inside Congress.

In Brief

Qatar’s Ivory Towers

12% — that’s the increase in the number of students this year at Education City in Doha. Qatar has opened its doors to thousands of international students, bringing them into its educational hub that hosts branches of six prestigious American universities, including Georgetown, Cornell, and Carnegie Mellon.

Over the years, Doha has poured more than $6 billion dollars into American academic institutions both in the United States and on Qatari soil, in a bid to transform itself into a regional center for higher education. Despite ongoing criticism regarding academic freedom and the boundaries of governmental influence over universities, Qatar continues to wield education as a tool of soft diplomacy.

More in this video

On Google Maps, Western Sahara Is Part of Morocco – If You’re Moroccan.

Hours after the United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 2797 granting Western Sahara “genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty,” many Moroccans shifted their attention from New York to Google Maps, believing that the company had removed the borders between the Sahara and the Kingdom.

A Google spokesperson explained that “people using Maps outside of Morocco see Western Sahara and a dotted line to represent its disputed border. People using Maps in Morocco do not see Western Sahara.

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