Farewell to the Abraham Accords

President Trump’s meeting with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was a success before the Saudi crown prince set foot in the White House. Despite calls for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords in exchange for selling them F-35 stealth fighters, Trump wisely saw that pressuring the Saudi prince into a deal whose time passed with the successful U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be harmful to both Israel and the Saudis.

But by pocketing what will be the first in a series of large checks for advanced American military equipment, Trump cut directly to the heart of the pact of mutual self-interest that has bound the United States and Saudi Arabia together since the Saudi king Abdulaziz met with FDR on the deck of the USS Quincy in 1945. In exchange for effective sovereignty over Saudi oil, the United States would protect the Saudi Kingdom’s territorial sovereignty with military force.

The Quincy Pact has lasted this long because it is clearly in the interest of both countries. Balance sheets don’t lie. The Saudis don’t need to field one of the world’s top battle-tested armies in a global trouble spot, or provide intelligence on terror threats that no other spy service can get, or pull off jaw-dropping covert ops like the beeper plot that detonated Hezbollah’s cadres, or invent life-saving medications, or fuel the world’s third-most inventive tech sector after Silicon Valley and Seoul. Those are the returns that Israel offers on the weapons that the United States sends as a strategic investment. All the Saudis need to do is sip coffee in the lobbies of foreign hotels while America pumps and protects their oil—and pay full sticker price for advanced fighter planes that will require equally expensive maintenance contracts to fly in the desert.

For his part, having resolved America’s concerns with Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities in June as he’s promised for more than two decades, the president wants to move on from the Middle East. It’s not as if he’s planning on rushing MBS out of the White House after their meeting; there’s a big black-tie dinner planned tonight with Elon Musk, Tiger Woods, and other luminaries on the guest list. There is also the matter of collecting those checks, which are worth tens of billions of dollars.