President Donald Trump has a vision of a "great transformation" in the Middle East. But it's not the transformation that American leaders have talked about bringing at gunpoint. At his Tuesday speech at a U.S.-Saudi investment summit in Riyadh, the president denounced the failures of "interventionists" and promised a future "where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence."
Those words came with action. In his speech, Trump promised to lift all U.S. sanctions on Syria, and the day after, he shook hands with new Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who had a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S. government just six months ago. In the weeks leading up to the summit, Trump ended the U.S. war in Yemen and negotiated the release of the last American in Hamas captivity. It remains to be seen whether he can follow through.
Riyadh was only the first stop in Trump's planned four-day tour of the Persian Gulf. He also plans to stop in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. In his speech, Trump praised the oil-rich Arab monarchies of the Gulf—and used their success to attack the architects of past U.S. policy.
