Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is increasingly busy hosting state leaders who fly in to discuss pressing global conflicts.
This Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met the Saudi Crown Prince to speak about Russia’s war in Ukraine. This is ahead of a Tuesday meeting between Ukrainian and a US teams set to negotiate a potential end to Russia’s war of aggression, as well as a security deal that would include US access to Ukraine’s valuable mineral and metal deposits.
It will be the first time that Ukrainian and US delegates talk face-to-face after the public spat between US President Donald Trump and President Zelenskyy in the White House in late February.
The fact that the two countries have agreed to meet in Saudi Arabia — and not, say, in Europe — highlights the emerging key position of the oil-rich kingdom in the Middle East.
“Saudi Arabia has indeed established itself as a platform for dialog in the last two to three years,” Sebastian Sons, a senior researcher for the German think tank CARPO, told DW.
“In Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy strategy, it currently plays a very important role to talk to everyone,” he added.
Positioning itself as a neutral mediator
In doing so, it would appear the kingdom is seeking to hold a position of neutrality, in order to maintain open channels of communication with all parties involved in the conflicts it is seeking to mediate.
In fact, “Saudi Arabia’s neutrality has led to its current mediating role,” Mohammed Kawas, a London-based political analyst, told DW.
“The country refrained from joining the West’s criticism and sanctions against Russia, while it was also in regular contact with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and provided humanitarian aid packages and medical aid worth millions for Ukraine,” Kawas explained.
In 2024, Riyadh helped facilitate a historic prisoner swap between Russia and the US. And in mid-Februar, the country hosted US-Russia talks, in which top Washington and Moscow officials met to discuss normalizing ties between both nations and ending the war in Ukraine.
It also seems likely that Riyadh will host a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — the first since the Republican assumed office earlier this year.
In addition to facilitating talks on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, Riyadh has also become a meeting spot for summits of the Arab League to discuss the conflict in Sudan and the future of Palestinians in Gaza.
“We see it providing that mediating role between the US and Russia, between the US and Ukraine, and it has become an essential player in the Middle East, certainly with regards to the Palestinians, to Syria and to Lebanon,” Neil Quilliam, a foreign affairs specialist at the London-based think tank Chatham House, told DW.
Kawas echoed this view: “With regard to the Middle East, all negotiations in the region go through Riyadh.”
Saudi interests
This pivot toward establishing itself as a neutral and reliable communication hub marks a turnaround from Saudi Arabia’s international isolation, which reached its nadir following the 2018 killing of the the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It might also help draw attention from the kingdom’s poor human rights record altogether.
Instead of defending domestic policies, the country’s new international standing enables the Saudi Crown Prince to leverage influence across other conflicts, observers point out.
“Saudi Arabia will certainly use the opportunity to mediate with Ukraine in order to present themselves as a reliable partner, as it wants concessions from Trump, especially with regard to Gaza and a future Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Sebastian Sons told DW.
Trump, a staunch ally of Israel’s, would like to see Israel and Saudi Arabia normalize ties.
However, the Hamas-led attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, and the resulting war in Gaza have stalled the process.
Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia rejected Donald Trump’s Gaza plans, in which he had proposed to turn the war-battered Gaza Strip into a “Riviera of the Middle East” under US ownership and displace some 2.3 million Palestinians to other Arab countries, such as Egypt and Jordan.Human rights experts have criticized these plans as tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Saudi Arabia has since reiterated its stance that it will not seek to normalize ties with Israel before a two-state solution, which would secure a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state, has been implemented.
Financial incentives
When Trump assumed office for his second term earlier this year, the Saudi Crown Prince was the first foreign leader to congratulate him. Shortly after, Trump called Crown Prince Salman a “wonderful person” during an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
In 2017, Trump’s first state visit abroad was to Saudi Arabia. The move was seen as controversial, especially as it coincided with Trumps admission that he had selected the kingdom as his first destination because it had pledged a series of investments worth over $350 billion (€323 billion) in the US economy.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/saudi-arabia-rebranding-as-mediator-for-global-crises/a-71875311
