President Donald Trump speaks during a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia. AP/PTI
TOI correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump on Monday dramatically raised the stakes in already sensitive peace efforts in the Middle East by demanding key Muslim allies – including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar – to sign the Abraham Accords as a condition for participating in what he described as a historic regional settlement with Iran.The surprising and sweeping proposal, revealed in a lengthy Social Truth publication following a weekend conference call with Arab and Muslim leaders, stunned diplomats across the Middle East and South Asia and immediately sparked resistance from Pakistan and concern in Riyadh and Doha.“It should be mandatory that all of these countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign the Abraham Accords,” Trump declared, referring to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain.
He warned that countries that refuse to do so “should not be part of this deal.”The Abraham Accords, reached during Trump’s first term in 2020, led to the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, later joined by Morocco and Sudan. The agreements were hailed in Washington as a strategic breakthrough that reshaped Middle East diplomacy by prioritizing economic cooperation and security relations over the long-frozen Palestinian issue.
However, critics see the move as merely institutionalizing an anti-Iran regional bloc, while marginalizing Palestinian aspirations for statehood.The request threatens the already fragile negotiations between the United States and IranUS President Donald Trump’s new demand that Muslim allies join the Abraham Accord threatens to complicate already fragile US-Iranian negotiations by injecting the most politically combustible issue in the Muslim world – normalization with Israel – into talks ostensibly centered around regional security and nuclear tensions. According to accounts of Trump’s phone conference with Muslim leaders on Saturday, he stunned them with his sudden insistence on linking normalization with Israel to any broader settlement with Iran. According to one account: “There was silence on the line, and Trump joked and asked if they were still there.” Saudi Arabia has repeatedly insisted that formal recognition of Israel can only happen after there is an “irreversible path” toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital – a condition that the Netanyahu government has flatly rejected.The Pakistani opposition is more categorical. Islamabad has never recognized Israel, and has historically linked any normalization to the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. Former Pakistani senator and veteran foreign policy commentator Mushahid Hussain Syed rejected Trump’s proposal as “completely rejected by the people of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the majority of the Muslim world.”In a post on the websiteHowever, analysts noted that Trump’s post appeared to implicitly acknowledge the political impossibility of forcing some countries to normalize immediately. “It is possible that one or two will have a reason not to do this, and that will be accepted,” he wrote, language seen as a reference to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.However, Trump continued to press ahead with his trademark grace, calling the agreements “the most important deal any of these great, but always conflicted, nations will ever sign.”
He went further, raising the extraordinary possibility that Iran itself would eventually join the Abraham Accords if Tehran reached an agreement with Washington.“Wow, now that’s going to be something special!” books.The idea of Iran – whose revolutionary ideology since 1979 has centered on opposition to Israel and American influence – joining the US-brokered normalization framework has been greeted in diplomatic circles with a mixture of astonishment and disbelief.However, the proposal received enthusiastic support from Trump’s allies, especially Republican hawks who see Arab-Israeli normalization as the cornerstone of a new regional order. Senator Lindsey Graham described it as “one of the most important diplomatic initiatives” in the history of the Middle East.Graham said: “The accession of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan to the Abraham Accords will be a radical change for the region and the world.”
“This is a great move by President Trump.” He also warned the Gulf states against resisting the initiative, saying that rejection “would have serious repercussions on our future relations.”But many analysts believe that Trump may be overestimating his power by merging separate diplomatic tracks — Iranian nuclear diplomacy, Gulf security engineering, Arab-Israeli normalization and Palestinian statehood — into one grand deal.
The timing is particularly sensitive. Anger across the Muslim world over the Gaza war has hardened public opinion against normalization with Israel. Even governments quietly interested in closer ties with Israel now face severe domestic political restrictions.For Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, normalization without clear concessions on Palestine risks accusations of abandoning the Arab consensus. Pakistan faces similar pressure from Islamist parties and public sentiment. Trump, however, seems convinced that a comprehensive diplomatic reset is still possible — a process that could simultaneously contain Iran, formalize Israeli relations with the Muslim world, and bolster his self-image as the ultimate dealmaker, a conclusion that would almost certainly put him on track for the Nobel Peace Prize he so publicly covets.
