Trump is expected to host Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman next month

President Trump will welcome Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of ­Saudi Arabia to a meeting in America next month. It will be the first time that Prince Mohammed, 40, has visited the White House since the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The Washington Post columnist was killed and his body dismembered by a team of 15 Saudi agents in 2018 after he was lured into the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. The CIA concluded that Khashoggi’s murder had been personally ordered by the prince. Mohammed’s last visit to the US took place shortly before the killing of the prominent Saudi dissident. Trump publicly questioned the CIA assessment, saying it could “very well be that the crown prince had knowledge of this tragic event: maybe he did and maybe he didn’t”. The president later described Khashoggi’s murder as “a shame, but it is what it is”. The crown prince’s trip is expected to take place on November 18-19 as Trump tries to woo oil-rich Gulf states to invest in the US. The president toured the Middle East this year, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. As well as boasting of $1 trillion in trade deals agreed during his four-day tour of the region, Trump celebrated an agreement with Saudi Arabia to transfer endangered Arabian leopards to the National Zoo in Washington. During the crown prince’s visit Trump is expected to press ­him to sign the Abraham Accords, the outstanding foreign policy achievement of the president’s first term. Saudi Arabia has been reluctant to join the accords, under which four Arab countries normalised relations with Israel. The crown prince has made normalisation contingent on the ­establishment of a Palestinian state. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law who negotiated the ­accords and was instrumental in finalising the Gaza peace deal, is often seen as the link between the Trump family and Saudi Arabia. Kushner’s private equity firm received $2 billion in Saudi investment after he left the White House following Trump’s first term. The husband of Ivanka Trump, Kushner had been expected to play a less prominent role during President Trump’s second term but he was ushered back to the forefront of Middle Eastern diplomacy during the ­Gaza negotiations. Since Trump’s visit to Riyadh this year, the US has bombed the nuclear facilities of Iran, a country traditionally seen as a ­regional rival to Saudi Arabia. Many observers ­believe that the war in Gaza has brought the two major Middle Eastern powers closer together. The crown prince met Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, in ­Qatar last month.