The White House announced a huge arms deal with Saudi Arabia on Saturday as President Donald Trump took his first steps on the world stage, looking to leave mounting troubles behind at home.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa received Ronald Neumann, President of the American Academy of Diplomacy, board member of the Middle East Policy Council and former US ambassador to Bahrain.

U.S. and Saudi Arabian companies signed business deals worth tens of billions of dollars on Saturday during a visit by President Donald Trump, as Riyadh seeks help to develop its economy beyond oil.

Yemen's Houthi movement said on Friday it had fired a ballistic missile toward the Saudi capital Riyadh and the Arab coalition waging war in Yemen said it had intercepted and destroyed a projectile around 200 km (120 miles) west of the city.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will not attend a gathering in Saudi Arabia on Saturday where U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to make his first international trip, state news agency SUNA said on Friday.

Israeli media reported that “a plan under discussion among Gulf state leaders would reportedly offer better ties with Israel”.

Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa lauded the positive changes in the USA policies towards the region and its countries, and the understanding of the US Administration, led by President Donald Trump, of the situation there. "The new vision and understanding will augur a new phase full of optimism and cooperation," he said, adding that "everyone is looking forward to the outcomes of President Trump's upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia and expects them to have positive impacts on the Arab and Islamic worlds."

Iran said on Thursday that new U.S. sanctions targeting its ballistic missile program show Washington's "ill will" and could undermine the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, state television reported.

Jailed Bahraini rights activist Nabeel Rajab criticized U.S. President Donald Trump in a New York Times column on Wednesday for selling arms to his country and Saudi Arabia, citing of their human rights records.

Saudi Arabia has invited Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, who is wanted for alleged war crimes, to a summit with US President Donald Trump and Arab and Muslim leaders, a Saudi official said Wednesday.

US President Donald Trump will urge unity between the world’s major faiths on an ambitious first foreign trip that will take him to Saudi Arabia, the Vatican and Jerusalem, the White House said Tuesday.

The United States has signed a new, updated defense accord with the United Arab Emirates that could allow Washington to send more troops and equipment there, the Pentagon said on Tuesday, in the latest sign of deepening ties with the close Gulf ally.

President of Bahrain Center for Human Rights and prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab is supposed to appear today (May 16, 2017) before the court in a case related to television interviews over which the authorities accuse of disseminating “false information”.

The United States is close to completing a series of arms deals for Saudi Arabia totaling more than $100 billion, a senior White House official said on Friday, a week ahead of President Donald Trump's planned visit to Riyadh.

It isn’t much good preaching about human rights and then embracing a policy conveying the message that if a country has “strong military ties” with the United States then it is of no consequence if it persists in “torture and abuse…”

A group of NGOs issued an appeal calling on international high-ranked officials and agencies to take public actions regarding the case of Bahrain’s Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim, before his trial scheduled to be held next Sunday May 7, 2017.

The “Defense One” website specialized in American military affairs said that the move taken by the Trump administration and represented by removing human rights conditions from a multibillion-dollar F-16 sale to Bahrain is likely to have severe repercussions for American interests in the Middle East.

The United States severely slammed the government of Bahrain and its recent measures against political parties and Shiite clerics.

President Donald Trump complained on Thursday that U.S. ally Saudi Arabia was not treating the United States fairly and Washington was losing a “tremendous amount of money” defending the kingdom.

The Al-Wasat local newspaper published a summary of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report which placed Bahrain on its Tier 2 rank on terms of religious freedoms. Bahrain was covered in the Other Countries Monitored section of the 2017 Annual Report, as a consequence of deteriorating conditions of religious freedoms.