Trump’s Gulf Bonanza

It used to be that only the leaders of smaller, mercantile powers would travel the world with an entourage of businessmen and use their political clout to help them sign deals.

French president Mitterrand turned this into an art form, and his successors have all sought to champion “La Maison France” during diplomatic missions abroad or during the visits of foreign leaders to Paris.

This sometimes led to retrospective embarrassment, such as Prime Minister Jacques Chirac gushing over visiting Iraqi vice president Saddam Hussein in 1975 and taking him on a tour of the Dassault Mirage fighter jet factory and of a French nuclear reactor, before selling the Iraqis both.

Chirac even hosted Saddam to an epic lunch in the hilltop paradise, Les Baux-de-Provence, where the Iraqi pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money to the young men who won a “cockade” bull fight specially staged in his honor. I tell the inside story of French arms sales to Saddam in the first volume of my memoir, And the Rest is History.

So far, the only people embarrassed by Donald Trump’s whirlwind tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates seem to be Democrats in Congress, who have pledged to put a hold on the hundreds of billions of dollars of new arms sales to those countries until Trump “explains” the Qatari offer of a $400 million Boeing jet he can use as Air Force One.

Even former Biden and Obama era officials were grudgingly praising the president for the way he wielded the powers of the presidency, not just in getting more than $1 trillion in investment deals and commercial purchases from the Gulf states, but in conducting diplomacy.

At the suggestion of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, Trump held a thirty minute meeting on Wednesday in Riyadh with new Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa, who just six months ago had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his as an international terrorist.

In any other administration, such a suggestion would have been turned over to the National Security Council and the “inter-agency,” where bureaucrats at a handful of government departments and the heads of intelligence agencies could chew it like cud — and invariably get the president to nix the idea because it had never been done.

Trump used the opportunity to publicly call on al-Sharaa to recognize Israel and join the Abraham Accords, which, if it happens, would totally transform the Middle East.

Also during the trip, Hamas released the last remaining U.S. hostage, Edan Alexander. But a deal brokered by Steve Witkoff for them to release another ten Israeli hostages apparently fell through. By the time you read this, Israel could be pummeling Hamas again.

Previous U.S. presidents distributed U.S. taxpayer dollars during overseas trips. President Trump has been filling the tax coffers instead.

As he was flying back to the United States, Trump revealed that Witkoff had put a term sheet on the table for a nuclear deal with Iran, and warned that the Iranians had a limited window for accepting it.

This brought an immediate response from Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, who wrote on X that Iran “has not received any written proposal from the united States, whether directly or indirectly.”

Araghchi went on to reiterate the Iranian regime’s own non-negotiable demand that they be allowed to retain the capability to enrich uranium, which Trump, Rubio, and 51 Republican Senators have rejected.

I suspect the Iranians are, once again, trying to play us. If they continue in this vein they are going to lose and lose big.

On the sidelines of the President’s Gulf Bonanza tour, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Putin wasn’t coming to peace talks with Ukraine, and that NATO members were poised to agree to boost defense spending to 5% of GDP, more than double the current 2% guideline.

In any other presidency, that would have been headline news. What a time we are privileged to live in.

I discuss all this, as well as the astonishing advances Ukraine has made in battlefield tactics and in their defense production on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.

The Ukrainians have created an entire new defense industry that today churns out 200,000 military drones every month, so when the Z-man comes to the table with Putin, he will have some unexpected new cards in his hand.

As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. Later, you can listen to podcast here.

Yours in freedom.

©2025 Kenneth R. Timmerman. All rights reserved.

Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here. 

Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.