WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will visit the Middle East next month on a three-country tour, his spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday.

It will be his second foreign trip since returning to office, following his planned attendance at the Vatican for Pope Francis’s funeral on Saturday.

Trump “will travel to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates from May 13 until May 16,” Leavitt told a White House press briefing, without elaborating.

Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat held talks in Washington earlier this month to lay the groundwork for a visit by Trump in a reprisal of 2017, when the oil-rich, conservative kingdom was the first destination of his first term in office.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, promised in January to pile $600 billion into US trade and investments.

Tuesday’s announcement comes as the White House is pursuing nuclear talks with Iran while threatening military action if they fail to reach a deal.

In 2018, Trump withdrew the US from a landmark nuclear deal signed three years earlier.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2025