Trump Grants Saudi Arabia Major-Ally Status and F-35s While Negotiating Personal Diriyah Deal

The episode echoes the 1981 AWACS sale—when the Reagan administration overrode congressional doubts to ship advanced surveillance planes to Riyadh—yet layers on personal gain reminiscent of Teapot Dome (1922) and Harding’s crony deals. Strategically, it amplifies two long arcs: (1) the U.S.–Saudi oil-for-security bargain forged in 1945 on the USS Quincy morphing into a data-, arms- and nuclear-tech compact; and (2) the global erosion of the post-1970s non-proliferation regime as states like UAE (2009), India (2008 waiver) and now Saudi Arabia bargain for reactors without giving up enrichment ambitions. On a century scale, gifting fifth-generation fighters and nuclear know-how to a monarchy that is simultaneously bank-rolling the president’s private ventures blurs the line between statecraft and personal commerce, accelerating a trend toward transactional geopolitics that weaker institutions may find hard to reverse. If Congress or future administrations fail to check it, historians may rank this moment alongside the Suez realignments of 1956 or the petrodollar accord of 1974 for its quiet yet durable reshaping of Middle-East power balances—and for normalizing conflicts of interest at the very summit of U.S. policymaking.