Blood and Oil, page 17
Afterward, King Salman presented Trump with Saudi Arabia’s highest honor for a foreigner, the Collar of the Order of Abdulaziz Al Saud. During the ceremony, Trump, not wanting to bow to the king as Obama appeared to do on an earlier visit, lowered himself in an awkward curtsey so that Salman could place the medal around his neck.
Trump and Salman sat at side-by-side tables in the middle of a giant, carpeted room, their delegations in armchairs along the wall, while they signed what Trump would later call $350 billion worth of deals, including weapons sales and Saudi investments with big US companies like the money manager BlackRock Inc. (It later turned out that many of the deals were just preliminary agreements.)
They visited Mohammed’s new antiterror center that day, touring the hotel lobby-cum-state-of-the-art-control-room, where some two hundred Saudi computer analysts used what they said were “artificial-intelligence programs” to sift through social media posts looking for clues to new targets or shifting ideologies. The actual programming was spearheaded by an American contractor working out of an office building in downtown Riyadh. The center was mostly for show.
Trump was impressed and, huddled with Melania, King Salman, and Egypt’s authoritarian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, placed hands on an illuminated globe in the center of the room. The Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, tried to edge into the photograph. He was at the center of a major Department of Justice investigation into billions of dollars stolen from a Malaysian fund and allegedly spent on lavish homes, including for his stepson, so a photograph with the US president would go a long way with voters back home.
Standing on the sidelines was Ali Alzabarah, the alleged former Twitter mole. Since returning to Riyadh, he had been working for Mohammed’s MiSK foundation. He told a friend that his name, along with those of dozens of other Saudis, had been provided to US officials ahead of Trump’s visit for a security check so he’d be allowed to spend time near the American delegation.
A Royal Court photographer captured a shot of the leaders gathered around the orb, Trump smirking and Salman gazing out in blank-eyed wonder. Mohammed bin Salman stayed out of the scene, letting his father take public credit while he continued to orchestrate from the background. The Saudis would later give the orb as a gift to the US government, which eventually stashed it out of sight in the embassy in Riyadh.
Trump walked hand in hand with Salman from one meeting to the next. But when the stage was set for the summit of Islamic leaders, the king had to be the focal point. So courtiers walked Salman to a desk atop an intricately patterned carpet in the middle of a high-ceilinged octagonal room, where he waited for Trump to arrive.
The scene struck a chord with Trump. “Wow,” he said to his Secret Service detail. “Wow. Get Melania over here! She’s got to see this!” His bodyguards and their Saudi counterparts scrambled to fetch the First Lady from her tour with a princess.
The summit took some awkward turns. In a traditional Arab move, it started with the Muslim leaders sitting on chairs along the wall on the periphery of a gilded, velvet-trimmed room. This is the typical layout of a majlis, where older Gulf royals conduct much of their business, going from person to person without any schedule or program.
Trump looked befuddled sitting on a chair as servers filled the Arab leaders’ porcelain cups with cardamom-perfumed coffee—and Trump’s porcelain cup with his preferred beverage, Diet Coke, poured from a traditional coffee pot. He recognized chiefs of some major powers, like Egypt’s Sisi and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But the rest were a blur. Could anyone blame the president for not knowing the Gambia’s Adama Barrow or Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev? White House officials cringed when Trump asked the name of a man who turned out to be Ashraf Ghani, the US-backed president of Afghanistan. At one point, a leader of one of the smaller African countries stood up and walked toward Trump; the others lined up behind him, forming a receiving line to greet the president.
During the preparation, a member of Trump’s security detail gave the advance man, Atkiss, a tip: “The president fucking hates Toby Keith.” He passed that on to the Saudis, who arranged for the country star to be whisked away to perform elsewhere in Riyadh, rather than in front of the president.
For Mohammed, those ceremonial events were much less important than the dinner he and his wife hosted for Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was along for the trip, was supposed to take the lead in US foreign policy. But MBS didn’t invite him, and Tillerson only learned of the dinner after it happened. It was a shrewd move, since it allowed Mohammed to sell his vision, and his version of Saudi history, to a US official with none of the skepticism or allegiance to MBN that Tillerson had.
“My father’s generation, they came from really nothing, and they look at where they are today, and it so far exceeds their dreams,” Mohammed told his guests. “But my generation looks and sees unlimited potential. And we’re not so patient.” Kushner was sold.
During other gatherings over the course of the trip, Mohammed and his deputies told Kushner and the president about their problems with Qatar, a tiny, gas-rich nation that occupies a peninsula off Saudi Arabia’s east coast. As a leader striving for a bigger seat at the international table, Qatar’s emir had made decisions that infuriated Saudi Arabia. One of the most aggravating was starting international news channel Al Jazeera, which brought Western-style accountability journalism to the region, especially amid the Arab Spring from 2011 to 2013. Many of the journalists were former BBC producers and came from other high-profile companies. Their coverage of the region’s politics was in-depth, hard-hitting, and illuminating.
They also had a crack investigative team headed by an American, Clayton Swisher, a former marine who served for a time as a bodyguard at the US State Department for Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell before turning to Middle East–focused journalism. Gulf leaders were annoyed about American and British media criticizing their policies and digging into affairs they’d like to keep quiet, but they couldn’t imagine why one of their supposed Arab allies would allow it.
Qatar also supported the Muslim Brotherhood, the group dating back to Egypt in the 1920s that had grown to be a powerful force across the Middle East, with a deep antipathy for the Gulf monarchies. The UAE and Saudi Arabia backed a military coup in 2013 against the first democratically elected president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader. MBZ had already told other White House officials, including Bannon, that Qatar was destabilizing the region and supporting terrorists.
Over the course of the trip MBZ and Mohammed made it clear that they were deeply at odds with Qatar. The problem for the United States is that Qatar is host to America’s largest air base in the Middle East. While Saudi Arabia is the United States’ biggest ally in the region, Qatar is arguably more strategically important when it comes to military operations.
Qatar is tiny, just a thumb-shaped spit jutting into the Persian Gulf. But its enormous oil and gas reserves and population of just 2.6 million give it fantastic amounts of money to spend. It has bought trophy assets around the world, including the Shard and Harrods department store in London. And it has bought goodwill. The US Army base in Doha was built using Qatar state funds, and the deal included unlimited electricity, oil, and gas—an arrangement worth billions of dollars to the United States.
Tillerson appreciated this and valued the alliance, and at a lunch for Gulf country leaders during the trip, he got the sense that something was off. The seating chart Tillerson received in advance showed him sitting at a table with Qatar’s foreign minister. But when he arrived, the minister had been moved to a table near the kitchen. Based on this and another apparent slight at a meeting of heads of state on the trip, Tillerson concluded that something was happening with Qatar, he would later tell a congressional committee.
The Saudis would present Trump with a pile of lavish gifts—bejeweled sculptures, swords, daggers, headdresses, and a robe lined with white tiger fur among them—and Trump and his staff would return to the United States claiming a foreign-policy victory of resetting ties with Middle East allies.
The importance of the meeting wouldn’t become clear for another two weeks. With the Trump delegation back in the United States, a newly emboldened Mohammed launched a Qatar offensive and initiated a domestic coup that would propel him to the top of the Saudi government.
The pinnacle of the two-day gathering was Trump’s speech. Obama had given one of his most memorable speeches at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the center of Sunni Islamic learning in the Arab world eight years earlier. He told the audience of scholars and politicians he’d come “to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.” He lamented how colonialism fueled conflicts in the region and created the conditions that allowed terrorist groups to grow.
Trump, speaking in a lavish conference hall with crystal chandeliers next to the Ritz-Carlton, made no apologies and described the conflict before them as a black-and-white matter. “This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it,” he said. “This is a battle between Good and Evil.”
Later in the speech, he almost lambasted his audience. “A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists. Drive. Them. Out. DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship. DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities. DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, and DRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH.”
There were multiple standing ovations. Bannon looked on with pride. This was the real, new beginning. No more apologies.
Masayoshi Son and Rajeev Misra also flew in during the Trump visit to sign the paperwork on the $100 billion Vision Fund. When they finally got in to see Mohammed bin Salman, they were astounded to find him alert and going strong despite having not slept in more than twenty-four hours.
After staying up late talking to Jared Kushner, Mohammed had gone straight to several events for a business conference taking place alongside the summit of Arab leaders. Trump had brought along an assortment of thirty American CEOs and top executives, many of them conservative donors to his campaign.
One morning they were brought into the palace for public announcements with the prince himself and relinquished their cell phones to security guards on the way in. But the prince didn’t appear for hours, leaving the executives to sit together with no way of communicating with anyone outside.
The scene was a bit awkward as stark competitors like NASDAQ’s Adena Friedman and the New York Stock Exchange’s Tom Farley, Raytheon’s Tom Kennedy and Lockheed Martin’s Marillyn Hewson, J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Dimon and Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman sat making small talk. They were some of the most important executives in the world, but they were willing to forgo communication even with their chiefs of staff and family members for hours on end for a chance at the MBS bonanza.
It was the peak of excitement among bankers and other businesses to take part in the Aramco IPO, which was still described as selling 5 percent of the company at an overall valuation of $2 trillion. The total fees on such an event could top a billion dollars.
Finally, the announcements began, with Trump looking on fondly as eye-popping commitments were made—in all $200 billion worth of business deals and $110 billion worth of arms purchases over a decade. The numbers were wildly inflated. Very little of the money was coming anytime soon, if ever, but it served Mohammed bin Salman well. This was a US president who formed foreign policy on a transaction-by-transaction basis, and he’d announced deals worth more than the GDP of Greece in 2017.
During the Vision Fund signing, there was so much excitement that Misra left the signed paperwork behind on a table in the room, and they had to send aides rushing to find it.
Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman had not been a full Trump supporter in the run-up to the election, but he remained neutral and began providing advice to the White House soon after Trump won. The Saudis, seeking to establish closer ties with businessmen in the Trump orbit, struck a deal with Schwarzman during the conference as well. The Public Investment Fund would contribute $20 billion to a special infrastructure fund mostly devoted to projects in the United States.
This was a savvy move by Mohammed. It got him closer to a Trump advisor, would contribute greatly to the US economy as a sign of goodwill, and should earn a hefty financial return in the end. It was the kind of arrangement that Mohammed wanted to make his signature deal.
Immediately, momentum for such agreements picked up. Word got out among US business leaders that Mohammed bin Salman was ready to deal, and they clamored to meet the prince. Ari Emanuel, Hollywood’s most powerful agent, met with Mohammed. “You’re the best at what you do,” the prince told Emanuel. “I want you to do your best here.”
Mohammed was eager to bring business and investment into the kingdom, but Emanuel—like Schwarzman and the other US businessmen who came to meet the prince—was there for another purpose. He wanted Saudi money, and by the time the trip was over, he had the outlines of a deal that would bring Emanuel’s firm, Endeavor, nearly a half billion dollars from the kingdom.
Chapter 10
“Blockade”
May 2017
Early on the morning of May 24, 2017, as Donald Trump was wrapping up the Israel leg of his first overseas trip as president, several bizarre statements from the emir of Qatar popped onto the website of the Qatar News Agency (QNA). It took just seconds for regional media in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to pick up the news and broadcast it far and wide, amplifying the reach so that millions of people saw the reports.
“Iran represents a regional and Islamic power that cannot be ignored and it is unwise to face up against it,” Qatar’s ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani told a military graduation in Arabic, according to the QNA accounts. “It is a big power in the stabilization of the region.” The statement amounted to treason among the most influential Persian Gulf states, which see Iran as the greatest threat and aggressor in the region.
Only it was all a ruse. Tamim had never given the speech or issued such a statement. Other reports were also false, including descriptions of tensions with US president Donald Trump, whom Tamim allegedly said might not last a full term; of Qatar’s good relationship with Israel; and of the emir’s admiration of Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Roused from bed, the thirty-seven-year-old Tamim ordered a statement issued denouncing the fake messages, and his ministers managed to get one out within forty-five minutes. But it was too late to stop the flood of Arabic news coverage on Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya and the United Arab Emirates’ Sky News Arabia.
The Qatari royal family knew immediately that their government systems were compromised, and they felt certain their increasingly assertive neighbors in Saudi Arabia and the UAE were involved. It took weeks for forensic evidence to emerge showing their systems had been infiltrated by a Russian cyber-mercenary group that had been hired for the job.
The ruling Al Thani had been on thin ice with their bigger neighbors for years, building on tensions lasting decades, but they hadn’t seen the sneak attack coming and initially underestimated the resolve of their adversaries. The old Gulf spats involved flare-ups, followed by mediation sessions led by the emir of Kuwait or sultan of Oman, after which the regional alliance was patched up with some grumbling. This new conflict was sudden and all-encompassing.
Within thirteen days, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and their closest allies, including Egypt and the tiny Comoro Islands, moved in lockstep to impose a full boycott of Qatar. They ejected Qatari citizens from their countries, severed financial ties, and refused to allow Qatari planes to use their airspace. Grocery stores ran out of food because the country had relied on land-based trade with Saudi Arabia for dairy products and other key produce. Even camels grazing just over the border were ejected.
Mohammed bin Salman, feeling emboldened by the Trump visit, even mulled invading Qatar by land if the country didn’t yield to a set of demands that included dismantling the Al Jazeera television channel and completely ceasing any foreign policy agenda diverging from that of its neighbors. In a culture that values saving face, he and his cohorts were demanding that Qatar return to its old status as a semi-independent vassal state.
It was a type of outward aggression not seen between Gulf states, and that successive US ambassadors to Saudi Arabia had tried to prevent through personal diplomacy, for decades.
There had been near constant tension between the kingdom and Qatar, its tiny and extremely wealthy neighbor, since the mid-1990s. Saudi rulers were especially incensed by Qatar’s foreign policy, which seemed to them based on making friends with Saudi enemies like the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain pulled their ambassadors out of Qatar in 2014 over such issues as Qatar’s support for the Arab Spring protests.
But that flare-up had passed, and in his near-weekly meetings with Mohammed, Joe Westphal, the Obama administration’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, spoke often with the prince about the importance of maintaining regional stability. By the spring of 2017, however, Westphal was finished with his assignment. The Trump administration had decided not to replace him right away and instead left Saudi-US relations largely in the hands of Jared Kushner, who was hardly a calming influence.
Westphal had often reminded Mohammed that outward aggression hurt Saudi Arabia’s image in the United States and made it harder for American politicians to publicly support him. There was no one to do that under the new administration. Now, instead of providing a moderating influence, the United States seemed to be instigating animosity against Qatar. “You’ve got to take care of this,” Trump advisor Steve Bannon told Mohammed bin Zayed. “These guys are worse than Persia. They’re right in your grill.”
