President Trump’s Middle East trip raises curiosity, concern
President Donald Trump made his first foreign trip of his second term to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Reminiscent of his first term, Saudi Arabia was stop number one where the president sold arms to the Royal Kingdom, which is a top customer for U.S. weapons.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) that monitors nation to nation arms sales, between 2020 and 2024, Saudi Arabia accounted for 12 percent of all U.S. arms exports, making it the largest single recipient of American military equipment during that period.
On this trip, President Trump inked a record $600 billion business package with Saudi Arabia that includes a $142 billion arms deal that a White House fact sheet touted as the largest in U.S. defense history. The deal involves over a dozen U.S. defense companies.
In Qatar the White House announced $243 billion in deals, and a massive aircraft deal with Boeing worth $96 billion. Figures were not made available on deals cut with the UAE. The billion dollar deals primarily benefit the wealthy.
“We should see that as a continuation of the colonial capitalist systems, profiteering, money hungry rich White men all over the world, said Charles Barron, co-founder of Operation Power and former New York Assemblyman and councilman.
“Billionaires trying to maintain their life, because they certainly aren’t getting those deals to help us in the ’hood, to help us in our neighborhoods,” he told The Final Call.
The trip was a billionaire’s bonanza, and a geopolitical buy-off for Arab leaders to shut their eyes to the crises in the region, observers and analysts argue.
“I think it’s very strange to go to the Middle East in this time of terrible turmoil and not be focusing on the political situation … coming up with a solution for the horrific suffering in Gaza right now,” said Madea Benjamin, activist and co-founder of CODEPINK, a pro peace and social justice organization.
She expressed concern to The Final Call that the Arab leaders seemingly did not insist the issue of Gaza, “be front and center, then business is second, and first is human lives.”
While America showers Israel with missiles that decimates Palestinians, including children, the monarchs are making a pact with the devil. In the several days of President Trump courting and being courted by billionaire monarchs in lavishly extravagant halls and fancy meals, Palestinians are being victimized by weaponized starvation.
Furthermore, hundreds were killed in Gaza. Israeli slaughter of Palestinian people has surpassed 53,000 since October 2023. Some sources place the slain at 61,000, accounting for the missing and presumed dead buried in the concrete rubble.
Also, in the same week of the president’s visit, justice advocates and proponents for peace continued lifting their voices to end genocide, hunger, and displacement in occupied Palestine.
On May 15, Nakba Day was commenced marking 77 years since the tragic Nakba (catastrophe), the violent displacement, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians between 1947-1949 at the creation of the State of Israel.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, has consistently cautioned the Muslim world about engaging with America,
And also cautioned them about deviation from the guidance of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. He served as the divine voice of reason, guidance and warning to the Muslim world in President Trump’s first term.
In a May 16, 2018, message during the Holy Month of Ramadan, titled, “The Blessed, Noble Holy Month of Ramadan: ‘Guidance to the Muslim World’” Minister Farrakhan stated:
“Many in our world of Islam have earned the chastisement of Allah, for Muslims are now killing Muslims at the suggestion of the evil one. Many in our world are destroying self and mosques and others to the joy of the enemy.”
He continued, “It is very painful for me, as a Believer, to see what Muslims are doing to Muslims in The Name of Allah. Allah has forbidden us to shed the blood of a Muslim, but now we have put on ‘the robes of Allah’ in our arrogance, and we say ‘this one is a Muslim, but this one is not,’ ‘this one is a Believer, and this one is not.’
We have made ourselves judges of one another because there are different schools of thought, different practices, different cultures that have earned their way or have been brought into the beautiful culture of Islam. So now, Muslim nations are at odds with nations.”
Just a few years later, in another message, Minister Farrakhan issued more divine guidance.
“In 2017, President Donald Trump went to Saudi Arabia, and he asked King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and his son, the crown prince, to call for all of the members of the Sunni community to a meeting in Riyadh; and President Trump came, and spoke.
And in 2018, I saw that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was with President Trump (at the White House), and President Trump was showing him the latest jet fighter that they wanted to sell to King Salman.
President Trump’s mind was that you would use these weapons against your brother in Tehran, Iran; so, he wanted to arm you, so that you could kill your brother.
It wouldn’t just be for America, you’d be killing an Iranian for Israel,” Minister Farrakhan warned in an April 21, 2023, message, “ ‘Some Pray, Others Watch’: Our Duty to Protect Our Houses of Worship,” on The Ummah Reflects podcast to close the Holy Month of Ramadan.
“Be careful, you leaders of the Muslim world, who you take guidance from. If you are one of those who put the Holy Qur’an behind your back, and can’t find the instructions that Allah has already laid down for us in that Book, then Satan will deceive you and tell you what they think is best.
No, Allah told us what is best through Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him! And he lived the Sunnah of the Holy Qur’an. He lived it! His wife, A’ishah, said ‘Muhammad is The Qur’an’ (‘He lives The Qur’an’),” Minister Farrakhan stated.
In his message, Minister Farrakhan expressed his hope that Arab and Muslim nations such as Syria, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to make peace with one another as “brothers.”
Ms. Benjamin added that the focus on militarism is something that also harms Americans. “Here Donald Trump is selling U.S. weapons companies overseas, at the same time he’s increasing the Pentagon budget here at home while cutting people out of life saving social services,” she said.
Ms. Benjamin said its distorted priorities of keeping America on a treadmill of war and militarism and has lost its soul and core.
“I feel like we are devolving more and more to what Martin Luther King talked about—a country that spends more on military then life affirming activities,” she said.
Mr. Barron said it’s important to see President Trump’s trip as a desperate attempt to salvage a declining U.S. empire on the global stage. As an example, he points to the rise of revolutionary movements across Africa and the growing influence of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations, actively challenging the dominance of the U.S. dollar.
The president’s efforts are rooted in a broader agenda to preserve American imperialism and capitalism, even as the nation grapples with deepening political divisions and widening economic inequality—particularly within Black communities.
Mr. Barron underscored the significance of these global economic shifts and the erosion of U.S. influence.
“We are in the belly of the beast of a colonial capitalist system that has an imperialistic foreign policy,” reasoned Mr. Barron. “Trump is panicking, American colonialism and imperialism is on the massive decline,” he stated.