US and Saudi Arabia sign arms deals worth almost $110bn - Aljazeera

The US and Saudi Arabia signed arms deals worth almost $110bn on Saturday, the first day of President Donald Trump's visit to the traditional US ally.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the arms agreements will help Saudi Arabia deal with "malign Iranian influence".

"The package of defence equipment and services supports the long-term security of Saudi Arabia and the entire Gulf region," Tillerson told reporters in Riyadh on Saturday.

This is "in particular in the face of malign Iranian influence and Iranian-related threats which exist on Saudi Arabia's borders on all sides," Tillerson said.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Riyadh, said that the arms deal would be seen by both signatories as a "win-win", especially as the deal involved arms that Obama was not prepared to sell to Saudi Arabia, including missile defence systems.

"I think this is what both sides are trying to project here: a successful meeting and the US relationship with Saudi Arabia returning to the way it was before President Obama," said Bays.

"Because certainly the White House says that it feels President Obama 'abandoned' Saudi Arabia and this region, and they want the whole world to know that now they are getting things 'back on track'."

The Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said in the joint press conference with his counterpart Rex Tillerson that the two countries had signed a "joint strategic vision declaration" and hailed the talks as a "truly historic day in the relationship between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States, and we believe the beginning of a turning point in the relationship between the United States and the Arab and Islamic world."

The arms agreements are part of a series of wider trade deals. Al-Jubeir said "the total value of those investments is in excess of $380bn," and claimed the deals would lead to the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US and Saudi Arabia.

The president and first lady Melania Trump were welcomed by Saudi King Salman as they disembarked at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on Saturday morning. - Read More

US and Saudi Arabia sign arms deals worth almost $110bn

rump arrives in Saudi Arabia in first foreign trip - Al Jazeera