Guardian column documents Saudi transactional payments failing to produce US strikes against Houthis

Summary

A Guardian opinion column by Mohamad Bazzi documents that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s September appeals to President Donald Trump for US airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthis have not produced the requested strikes despite a January 2025 Saudi investment pledge of $600 billion over four years that the column reports was “later promised to increase to nearly $1 trillion.”
The column reports that an October 10 Houthi cruise missile struck Riyadh’s international airport, “killing at least 13 people and wounding more than 300,” after which Trump told reporters, “We may. We’re going to look at it,” and, “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision.”
The column attributes the documented resistance primarily to electoral pressure, reporting that US inflation reached 3.7 percent in September, that midterm elections were weeks away, and that Trump “seems worried about expanding the US role in a regional war that is deeply unpopular among Americans, including segments of Trump’s own Maga base that believed his repeated promises not to start new wars.”
The column documents a cumulative transactional relationship since Trump’s May 2017 first-foreign-trip visit, including the post-2018 Khashoggi handling, post-2021 family-business investments that the column says helped “at one of its weakest points,” and Saudi flows to Kushner’s firm and the Trump Organization, framing the pattern as one in which “Saudi Arabia cannot count on Washington for protection despite billions in arms purchases and US investments.”

Lede

A Guardian opinion column dated 2026-10-19 by Mohamad Bazzi, director of NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, reports that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman placed multiple calls to President Donald Trump in September seeking US airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi militia, and that Trump had not, as of the column’s writing, ordered those strikes. The documented sequence begins with the September appeals and culminates in an October 10 Houthi cruise-missile strike on Riyadh’s international airport that the column reports killed “at least 13 people and wounding more than 300.” When reporters in Washington asked Trump whether he would be “more willing to order US strikes against the Yemeni rebels,” the column reports Trump answered, “We may. We’re going to look at it,” and, “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision.” The column frames the episode as part of a documented pattern in which transactional capital flows — Saudi investment pledges, an F-35 sale, a defense-cooperation agreement, and Saudi investment into vehicles affiliated with the Trump family — have not translated into the operational security commitment MBS is reported to have expected. The analytical claim under examination, as articulated by Bazzi, is that the documented US refusal represents the operation of an electoral calculus under inflation pressure, a cumulative transactional record that has produced expectations without enforcement, and a structural change in US regional commitments in which the protection the prior transactions were built on is being consumed by other commitments rather than held in reserve.

The documented sequence: appeals, attack, non-response

The column reports that Mohammed bin Salman “called President Donald Trump multiple times in September” urging strikes against the Houthis, whom it identifies as allied with Iran. The column documents the October 10 Houthi cruise-missile strike on Riyadh’s international airport, with the casualty figures stated as “at least 13 people and wounding more than 300.” Trump’s documented response to reporters, as the column reports it, was “We may. We’re going to look at it,” followed by, “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision.” The column does not document a subsequent US strike order.

The column situates the appeal and non-response inside a documented multi-term pattern. It reports that Trump selected Saudi Arabia as the first stop of his maiden overseas trip as president in May 2017, that “the Saudis feted him with banquets in gilded palaces and awarded him the kingdom’s highest civilian honor,” and that the Saudis “realized Trump craved flattery.” The column documents that, after the October 2018 assassination of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member team that “dismembered his body with a bone saw,” US intelligence agencies “quickly concluded Prince Mohammed had ordered the killing,” and that Trump “protected the prince from US sanctions and from pressure from outraged members of Congress.” The column reports that, after the January 2021 Capitol riot, when “US banks and several large companies distanced themselves from the Trump Organization,” “Saudi Arabia stood by Trump while he was out of power, generating real estate deals and new golf partnerships that helped the family business at one of its weakest points.” The column further documents that, days after Trump’s January 2025 return to the White House, MBS “pledged to expand investment and trade with the US by $600 billion over four years,” a figure the column reports was “later promised to increase to nearly $1 trillion,” with the column noting that “it was not entirely clear how Saudi Arabia would manage to invest a sum close to the kingdom’s entire annual GDP into a foreign economy over a few years.”

The column documents that during MBS’s Washington visit last November, the prince “sealed a defense cooperation agreement with the US and signed a deal for the monarchy to buy dozens of F-35 stealth fighter jets,” described in the column as “America’s most advanced warplane.” It reports that “behind the flurry of deal-making, the prince expected the US to defend the kingdom if it was attacked, as Washington had done in the past,” and that Trump hosted MBS for lunch “with top administration officials” and “held a black-tie dinner with business executives eager to solicit investments from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, which the crown prince controls.” The column reports that, during that visit, Trump defended MBS when a reporter asked about the Khashoggi killing, with Trump quoted as saying, “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” and, “Things happen,” and insisting that MBS “knew nothing about” the assassination — a claim the column notes was made “despite the CIA reaching the opposite conclusion during Trump’s first term.”

Differential diagnosis: competing explanations for the resistance

Four candidate explanations for the documented US resistance are consistent with the column’s evidence. The analytical task is distinguishing them by what each predicts when one piece of evidence is inverted, rather than by surface plausibility.

The column’s documentation favors an electoral-calculation reading as primary. The column reports US inflation reached 3.7 percent in September, that midterm elections were weeks away, that “Republicans are facing widespread anger over the cost of living,” and that Trump “seems worried about expanding the US role in a regional war that is deeply unpopular among Americans, including segments of Trump’s own Maga base that believed his repeated promises not to start new wars.” Under this reading, strikes would compound energy prices and contradict a documented campaign pledge, both politically damaging. The diagnostic check: if post-midterm polling favors Republicans but gas prices remain elevated, this hypothesis predicts the resistance would weaken as the electoral pressure subsides.

A leverage-retention reading is the secondary candidate the column itself flags. The column documents that “billions of dollars in Saudi investments have been directed into the private equity firm of Trump’s son-in-law and former top adviser, Jared Kushner, and into the Trump Organization, the president’s family business,” and that MBS “could also ratchet up pressure on Trump by threatening to withhold Saudi investments in the US economy and the president’s family business.” Under this reading, withholding strikes preserves a bargaining chip convertible into further Saudi concessions. This hypothesis predicts reversal once leverage is spent or once political pressure subsides — a possibility the column entertains for the post-election period, writing that “it is unclear whether Trump will continue to resist launching airstrikes against the Houthis after next month’s elections.”

A structural-resource-constraint reading is consistent with the column’s documentation that, over the prior seven months, “some of which, he wrote, were decimated by Iranian attacks,” referring to US bases in Gulf states, and that Trump’s “war against Iran over the summer” broadened the US regional footprint. Under this reading, the operational capacity to absorb another active front is constrained regardless of the political calendar. The diagnostic check: this hypothesis predicts resistance would persist independent of the election outcome, because the limiting factor is operational rather than political. This candidate explains why the documented transactional history has not translated into the expected outcome: documented Iranian attacks on US Gulf infrastructure may have genuinely depleted the operational capacity MBS expected to draw on.

An indecision reading treats Trump’s “We may. We’re going to look at it” statement as consistent with non-resolution rather than a deliberate posture; the column itself notes uncertainty about whether Trump “will continue to resist launching airstrikes against the Houthis after next month’s elections.”

A pure personalization reading — in which Trump protects or resists MBS out of personal affinity — is undercut by the column’s documentation of Trump’s defense of MBS during the November White House visit, when asked about the 2018 Khashoggi killing. The documented contradiction between Trump’s stated position and the CIA’s reported conclusion is not, however, dispositive of the present decision calculus.

The candidates are not mutually exclusive. The strongest documented signal in the substrate — midterm proximity combined with the 3.7 percent inflation figure — favors the electoral-calculation reading as primary, with the leverage-retention reading as the secondary candidate the column itself explicitly flags. Bazzi characterizes Trump’s resistance as “one of the best foreign policy decisions of an otherwise disastrous second term,” but the column separately reports that Trump’s “war against Iran over the summer” broadened the US regional footprint, indicating that any reluctance to escalate is selective at most.

Negotiation anatomy: interests, BATNA, leverage, integrative moves

The column documents MBS’s stated position as a request for US airstrikes. The interests the substrate supports include: protection of Saudi oil-export infrastructure, which the column connects to “the war’s impact on Saudi oil exports”; preservation of credibility as a security patron domestically and within the Gulf; protection of territory from documented Houthi missile and drone attacks; protection of prior transactional investments from appearing wasted; procedural interest in being treated as a strategic partner (the column documents Saudi Arabia’s selection as Trump’s first foreign trip in May 2017 and the post-Khashoggi handling); and a fairness-perception interest in recouping the value of the pledged investment expansion from $600 billion over four years to “nearly $1 trillion,” the feasibility of which the column flags as not entirely clear.

The column documents Trump’s stated position as “We may. We’re going to look at it.” The interests the substrate supports include: avoidance of pre-midterm political cost; preservation of the “no new wars” brand within the documented anti-interventionist segment of the base; preserving Gulf-state capital flows; avoiding congressional constraint if Democrats win both houses; continued exposure of the Trump family business to Saudi sovereign-wealth deployment; and the option value of withholding a strike.

The column documents MBS’s alternative of “ratchet[ing] up pressure on Trump by threatening to withhold Saudi investments in the US economy and the president’s family business,” alongside alternative security arrangements not enumerated in the substrate that would carry their own costs. The column’s documentation that MBS “is reeling from the war’s impact on Saudi oil exports” indicates that MBS’s alternative weakens over time if documented Houthi attacks on Saudi infrastructure continue. For the United States, alternatives include continuing the present posture, escalating against Iran directly per the documented “war against Iran over the summer,” and accepting greater Saudi responsibility for its own defense; these alternatives strengthen over time as the midterms pass and political constraints relax — a transition the column itself entertains.

The column documents Saudi leverage attempts through investment ties and the implied threat of withholding them, and documents Trump’s transactional pattern of family-business enrichment through Saudi capital — “real estate deals and new golf partnerships” generated during the post-2021 period that the column describes as helping the family business “at one of its weakest points.” A leverage-based reading is consistent with the column’s documented conduct on each side; a purely cooperative-posture reading would miss the documented leverage attempts. Objective criteria available to evaluate any proposal include: prior US precedents for allied-state protection, which the column cites as “as Washington had done in the past”; the documented operational capacity of the US in the Gulf after Iranian strikes; market effects on global energy prices, which the column documents as a domestic political factor; documented domestic political constraints inside the US; and the November defense-cooperation agreement and F-35 purchase as documented arms-transfer standard. The supplied reporting does not establish whether the November agreement legally obligates the US to defend Saudi Arabia against Houthi attacks specifically.

The column documents a divergence in expectations: “behind the flurry of deal-making, the prince expected the US to defend the kingdom if it was attacked, as Washington had done in the past,” and in November Trump defended MBS by saying MBS “knew nothing about” the Khashoggi killing, a claim the column notes was made “despite the CIA reaching the opposite conclusion during Trump’s first term.” The documented pattern is repeated assertions of relationship on one side and selective protection on the other, without documented convergence on what each side owes the other.

Integrative moves consistent with the substrate include: joint US-Saudi operations with US participation limited to intelligence, missile defense, and targeting support rather than strike execution; a documented agreement clarifying which categories of Saudi spending correspond to which categories of US response; diplomatic engagement with Iran to reduce Houthi capacity indirectly; and reconstruction of US facilities in Gulf states documented as degraded by Iranian strikes. The column’s own stated position — “there is a clear US interest in promoting diplomacy and de-escalating the Houthi-Saudi conflict” — falls in the integrative category. Whether the parties can convert documented interests into documented agreement depends on whether the perception divergence can be addressed at the level of expectations rather than at the level of positions.

Root cause: structural decoupling of transactional flows from security commitments

The substrate documents three layers of cause beneath the surface refusal.

Layer 1 — electoral proximity. Elevated inflation (the column reports 3.7 percent in September), a documented anti-interventionist segment of the Maga base, and midterm timing. Removing this cause would require the midterms to be distant, gas prices to be lower, or the base to be reliably hawkish; none of those conditions are present in the column’s reporting.

Layer 2 — cumulative transactional commitment. The column documents a sequence across both terms: the May 2017 state visit in which “the Saudis feted him with banquets in gilded palaces and awarded him the kingdom’s highest civilian honor”; the October 2018 Khashoggi aftermath, where the column reports Trump “protected the prince from US sanctions and from pressure from outraged members of Congress”; the post-2021 period in which “Saudi Arabia stood by Trump while he was out of power, generating real estate deals and new golf partnerships” that the column describes as helping the family business “at one of its weakest points”; the January 2025 pledge; and the November defense-cooperation and F-35 agreements. The documented cumulative effect is that MBS expects protection as a consequence of those exchanges.

Layer 3 — structural change in US regional commitments. The Iran conflict, the documented degradation of some US bases in the Gulf (“some of which, he wrote, were decimated by Iranian attacks over the past seven months”), and the documented broadening of US commitments per the column’s account of Trump’s “war against Iran over the summer.” The protection the first-term transactions were built on is now being consumed by another commitment rather than held in reserve.

Under a root-cause-vs.-contributing-factor analysis, a response addressing electoral timing alone would not prevent recurrence once the midterms pass, because the underlying constraint on US capacity persists; a response addressing either the Iran commitment or the documented Saudi expectation about what investments purchase would alter the structural dynamic. The differential: electoral proximity contributes to the timing of the refusal, but the change in US regional commitments is the condition whose removal would have prevented the divergence between MBS’s documented expectation and Trump’s documented behavior.

Convergent causal chains documented in the substrate include: the November defense-cooperation agreement and F-35 sale, which the column documents as procedural mechanisms intended to formalize US-Saudi security alignment, with the procedural gap that these agreements, as documented, do not appear to commit the US to offensive operations against a non-state Iranian-aligned force in a third country on Saudi request; the documented damage to US Gulf bases, which is a measurable signal that the documented US security footprint has not produced the protection referenced; and Saudi investment inflows into Kushner’s private equity firm and the Trump Organization, which the column documents, with the absence of a documented formal mechanism converting those flows into operational strike commitments indicating a structural gap between transactional payments and security outputs. The October 10 missile strike, the Iran war’s domestic inflation impact, and the proximity of midterms constitute external pressures on US decision-making that are not responsive to Saudi investment.

The systemic root cause, per the column’s documented pattern, is that transactional capital flows — Saudi pledges, the F-35 sale, the defense cooperation agreement, the Kushner-firm and Trump-Organization investments — do not translate into operational security commitments against Houthi missile strikes. Bazzi characterizes the pattern as “never count on Trump to protect you.” Contributing factors include the column’s documentation of Trump family-business exposure to Saudi capital, congressional and electoral constraints, and Trump-era rhetorical commitments to avoid new wars. The structural feature the column documents is the absence, in the agreements as described, of a binding US commitment to defend Saudi Arabia against Houthi missile strikes specifically — the November 2025 defense-cooperation agreement and the F-35 sale, as characterized in the column, do not appear to convert investment flows into offensive strike guarantees.

How the column frames the episode

The column frames the episode through the analytic lens Bazzi articulates — a pattern in which Trump-era transactional payments do not translate into operational protection. Bazzi characterizes Trump’s resistance as “one of the best foreign policy decisions of an otherwise disastrous second term,” an evaluative framing distinguishable from the underlying documented pattern. The column treats the Khashoggi episode as part of the documented sequence — Trump’s defense of MBS at the November White House visit, “despite the CIA reaching the opposite conclusion during Trump’s first term” — without extending the documented conduct into motive attribution. Bazzi extends the lens to other Arab Gulf countries and petrostates that have “invested billions of dollars to appease Trump,” writing that they too cannot rely on the administration to protect them. The framing’s analytical load is sourced; its evaluative register (the “best foreign policy decision” characterization, the “hard lesson” formulation) belongs to the columnist.

Post-midterm trajectory

The column entertains reversal: “it is unclear whether Trump will continue to resist launching airstrikes against the Houthis after next month’s elections.” If the Houthis keep up attacks on Saudi infrastructure and capture more territory held by Yemen’s Saudi-aligned government, Trump could face more pressure to intervene from the Saudis and hawkish Republicans, and would be less constrained by worries about “expanding the Iran war shortly before the midterms.” MBS, “who is reeling from the war’s impact on Saudi oil exports,” could ratchet up pressure by threatening to withhold Saudi investments in the US economy and the president’s family business — a pressure the column documents as available. The column reports that Trump’s stated non-resolution — “We may. We’re going to look at it” — leaves the question open across the documented midterms, with the structural-resource and leverage-retention readings both predicting that the resistance could weaken as the documented electoral constraint subsides.

Substrate caveat

Every load-bearing factual claim in this analysis traces to a single Guardian opinion column by Mohamad Bazzi dated 2026-10-19. The substrate is the sole attestation for the October 10 strike figures (13 dead, more than 300 wounded), the January 2025 pledge and its escalation to “nearly $1 trillion,” the 3.7 percent September inflation figure, the “billions of dollars” in Saudi investments directed to Kushner’s firm and the Trump Organization, the “decimation” of US Gulf bases by Iranian strikes, and the framing of Trump’s “war against Iran over the summer” as broadening the US regional footprint. Where external corroboration would alter the analysis — confirmation of the article’s publication date relative to the events it describes, primary documentation of Saudi PIF investments in Affinity Partners and Trump Organization vehicles, Pentagon statements on Gulf-base damage, or BLS inflation data — the substrate does not supply it. The differential-diagnosis reading rests on the column’s own documentation; a competing account that reported, for instance, a higher inflation figure or different Saudi investment magnitudes would shift the weight between the electoral-calculation and leverage-retention candidates. The substrate’s single-column character is the principal limitation on the analysis’s confidence interval.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Differential Diagnosis: Lists the candidate explanations for a symptom and rules them out one by one.
Principled Negotiation: Works a negotiation from interests, options, and objective criteria rather than positions.
Root-Cause Analysis: Traces a symptom back along its causal chain to the conditions that actually generated it.