Trump and Bibi grasping hands in Israel

Travelling Trump: Riyadh and Jerusalem stops on a heavily-armed road to nowhere

Washington: You’ve got to hand it to the Saudi princes. There they were last weekend, arming themselves to the teeth by throwing down orders for $US110 billion worth of American weapons, but desperately hoping Donald Trump will tame Iran for them.

On his first overseas trip, some saw Trump as walking into a set of Middle East pincers – on one side the Saudis, who are desperate to see Tehran taken down a peg or more; and on the other, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, mired in almost as much domestic scandal as Trump, but who has waited years for a US president who might embrace his view that in a region of crises, Iran is the crisis to which all others – and especially Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians – must be subordinated.

Read the full article by Paul McGeough at The Sydney Morning Herald.