Saudi Arabia

Over the past week a lot of digital ink has been spilled trying to preview and predict what will take place during Trump's first official mammoth visit abroad, when over the next 8 days after an overnight flight on Air Force One, Trump will hopscotch from Saudi Arabia to Israel to the Vatican. He’ll close his trip with a pair of summits in Brussels and Sicily. The stakes are great for Trump who makes his debut on the international stage: he’s the first president since Jimmy Carter to not travel abroad during his first 100 days in office.

Authored by Zainab Calcuttawala via OilPrice.com,

It’s “Infrastructure Week” in Washington, and foreign powers are taking note.

Ahead of President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has promised to make $40 billion of its sovereign wealth fund available to the United States to bankroll part of the roughly $1 trillion in infrastructure improvements that Trump promised on the campaign trail.

Authored by Jason Ditz via TheAntiMedia.org,

Earlier this month, US officials said the US was seeking to reach “billions” of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia as part of Trump’s visit to Riyadh. With a week left before the visit, officials now say the White House is very close to the deal, and that it will amount to over $100 billion in sales.

Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

Oil prices surged on Monday after Russia and Saudi Arabia said they support an extension of the OPEC/non-OPEC production cuts. Oil prices have clawed back a lot of the losses exhibited over the past month, with Brent now safely in the low-$50s and WTI on its way toward those levels.

An unexpected war of words erupted between two sworn Middle-Eastern rivals over the weekend, when Saudi Arabia and Iran threatened each other with military action, if not outright destruction.

It started on Tuesday, when in "unusually blunt comments" delivered during a nationally-televised interview Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - the man who is now effectively in charge of Saudi oil policy - ruled out any dialogue with Iran and pledged to protect his conservative kingdom from what he called "Tehran's efforts to dominate the Muslim world."