The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States have signed a historic agreement announcing their intent to establish the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center (TFTC), a collaborative approach to confronting new and evolving threats arising from terrorist financing. The TFTC represents a new and creative response that leverages existing tools and formalizes cooperation between the United States, Saudi Arabia and partners in the Gulf to counter terrorist financing. The TFTC will be co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and the US, and will work collaboratively with the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council to counter global terror networks.  The TFTC’s goals are to:

• Identify, track, and share information regarding terrorist financial networks;
• Coordinate joint disruptive actions; and
• Offer support to countries in the region that need assistance building capacity to counter terrorist finance threats.

The United States and the Gulf have worked hard to strengthen cooperation on countering the financing of terrorism. This relationship is exemplified by information sharing, regular high-level and expert-level engagement and joint disruptive actions that the U.S. and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council have taken together over the years.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States, together with the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have all signed a new memorandum of understanding on countering the financing of terrorism.