As negotiations to end the Iran war continued on May 25, Donald Trump made a series of phone calls in which he pressed key Middle Eastern leaders to join Abrahamic covenants. Announced in 2020, these agreements established diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, starting with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain.
The American president repeated his proposal in a post on social networks later that day: “After all the work done by the United States to try and pull off this very complex puzzle, it should be mandatory for all these countries, at least, simultaneously, to sign the Abraham Accords.”
Trump’s post suggested that Iran they can also join the agreements. That would indeed be something, given that one motive for signing the accords was to push back against Iranian influence in the region. Unfortunately for Trump, this is wishful thinking at best.
Few Middle Eastern leaders could agree with Trump’s proposal. In the comments published by Politico On May 26, an unnamed former US diplomat described Trump’s comments as a “poison pill”. They added that he had created “new conditions for peace that neither Iran nor the countries concerned will accept”.
In advocating this approach, Trump misunderstands the position held by many in the Middle East — and beyond — about Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon. of the official death toll in Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign since 2023, there are over 70,000 people. An estimated 170,000 other people were injured as a result many are calling a “genocide”.
In southern Lebanon, Israel has used ground troops and a relentless campaign of airstrikes since the start of the war in Iran, in what appears to be an effort to secure a “buffer zone” against attacks by Hezbollah. More than 3200 people there have been killed so far, with another 7,500 injured and millions forced from their homes.
This despite the signing of a TRUCE between Israel and the Lebanese government in April.
Against Trump’s proposal
The destruction of Gaza angered Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, with Manama recalling its ambassador in Israel immediately after the start of the war.
But no country withdrew from the Abraham Accords. Instead, trade and security cooperation continuedwith both maintaining that closer cooperation with Israel would be in the best interest of their respective states.
However, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are further away in the Middle East. Other countries are far less willing or able to normalize with Israel. When US officials visited Saudi Arabia in 2024, four years after the deal was signed, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman reportedly told them that he he was afraid he would be killed if he would normalize relations with Israel.
Although many have argued that the Saudi Kingdom was close to normalizing relations with Israel before the Gaza war, this has largely been rejected by Saudi officials. And since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, bin Salman and other Saudi officials have emphasized repeatedly that the normalization of diplomatic relations with Israel will not happen without taking irreversible steps towards Palestinian statehood.
Meanwhile, tensions between Israel and Turkey have started for some time. In February, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, stated that Turkey it was “the next Iran”. Recently, on May 20, the Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports, Miki Zohar, stated that Turkey should be treated as an “enemy state”.
And in Qatar, state officials remain angry with Israel for the launch hits Doha in 2025 in an attempt to kill key Hamas figures stationed there. Qatar said it had hosted Hamas figures as part of broader mediation efforts sought by the US and Israel.
The attacks led to a now-infamous photo released by the White House of Trump overseeing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he called Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani to apologize.
The idea of Iran becoming a signatory to the Abraham Accords right after a devastating war is also fantastic. Tensions between Israel and Iran can be traced back to 1979, when a revolution overthrew the Iranian monarchy and led to the establishment of an Islamic republic.
Iran’s new leadership immediately gave support to the Palestinian cause and, in later years, to Hezbollah and other militias throughout the Middle East.
In response, Israel has carried out military strikes on targets across Iran, killed top nuclear scientists and more. To suggest the disregard of almost half a century of history with little or no attempt at reconciliation is farcical.
So why did Trump suggest such a move? Perhaps it speaks to a need to appease constituencies within the US, or those in Israel, by pushing for broader normalization between Tel Aviv and the Arab and Muslim world.
A second reading is that it is an attempt to prevent diplomatic progress in resolving tensions with Iran by placing an insurmountable roadblock in the form of the demand for normalization with Israel, perhaps reflecting the plurality of positions on the war found in Washington.
A third view is that this is a move to reduce the scale of destruction and human suffering that has been caused in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, in the hope that some form of transactional politics – driven by trade and security – will be sufficient.
But, as Trump will discover, that’s a long shot.
Simon Mabon is a professor of international relations, Lancaster University
This article was reprinted from Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read on original article.
