The U.S. has agreed to sell Saudi Arabia an arms package worth nearly $142 billion, the White House announced Tuesday, as President Donald Trump kicked off his Middle East trip in Riyadh. Described by the Trump administration as "the largest defense cooperation agreement" in history,

The United States agreed on Tuesday to sell Saudi Arabia an arms package worth nearly $142 billion, according to a White House fact sheet that called it "the largest defense cooperation agreement" Washington has ever done.

Saudi Arabia is of key diplomatic importance to the Trump White House, especially amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Northern Trust Asset Management, Neuberger Berman and I Squared Capital signed preliminary agreements with the roughly $925 billion wealth fund to invest in its efforts to develop a series of new investment strategies focused on Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East and North Africa region.

President Trump goes to the Gulf kingdom this week seeking $1 trillion worth of investments in the United States — a sum equivalent to the entire Saudi gross domestic product for a year.

The oil barons of the Middle East have been trying to diversify out of carbon fuels and into other parts of the global economy for decades, but artificial

President Donald Trump has met with Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the first such encounter between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years.