American presidents visit Saudi Arabia for decades and travels have often produced memorable moments – some dramatic, others definitely strange.
While President Trump returns to Saudi Arabia, here is a look at four moments of the previous presidential trips to visit the leaders of the state of the Gulf full of oil.
2022: Biden Fist Bump
The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia seemed to have screwed before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. visited Jeddah in 2022.
Mr. Biden, as a candidate in 2019, had promised to transform Saudi Arabia into a “paria” for the killing of the journalist of the Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA said he had been ordered by the Saudi hereditary prince, Mohammed Bin Salman.
But while Mr. Biden worked in 2022 to manage oil prices, which increased the vast rail of Russia in Ukraine, the president took a different turn. Arriving at the Royal Palace, Mr. Biden, smiling slightly, gave the hereditary prince a punch while a bank of cameras rolled.
The Saudi government quickly published an image of the fist on social media. Mr. Biden later told journalists that he had privately faced Prince Mohammed on the murder and that the Prince “essentially said he was not personally responsible”.
Returning to Washington, Mr. Biden became impatient when he is pressed on his fist. “Why don't you talk about something that matters?” He reproached a journalist.
Within months, Mr. Biden recognized that the journey had not produced the increase in the production of Saudi oil he had sought.
2017: Trump and the sphere
It seemed something from the children's movie.
During a visit to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, at the beginning of his first term, Mr. Trump found himself getting his hands on a bright white sphere.
Next to him, even the Saudi Arabia King Salman and President Abdel Fattoh El-Sisi of Egypt put his hands on the sphere. An image of the men who touch the sphere – with the First Lady, Melania Trump, looking – circulated widely on social media, with memes that multiply in a short time.
A meme compared the image to that of Saruman, the villain of the “lord of the rings”, which touched a stone to see.
But the sphere of Riyadh was not, it was discovered, magical.
The sphere was a translucent globe, apparently decorative, in a structure full of computer terminals and dedicated to the fight against extremist ideology.
1974: Nixon says “We need wisdom”
President Richard M. Nixon met a warm reception in Jeddah during a snowshoe to five nations through the Middle East in the spring of 1974.
Nixon arrived hoping to encourage the country to help reduce oil prices, according to the passages of its memories published by the Richard Nixon Foundation.
But he also arrived with another goal: pushing Saudi Arabia to use his remarkable regional influence to push for peace in the Middle East.
In the observations at the State Palace, he underlined to his guests who did not come just to win cheaper oil.
“We can use oil, but we need more, something much more than oil,” said the president. “We need wisdom.”
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Although he did not go to the Saudi soil, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met the founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz al-Saud, in an American war ship in the great Bitter Lake, part of the Suez channel in Egypt.
Roosevelt enchanted the king, who fought to walk, presenting him with the gift of a wheelchair.