President Donald Trump is attempting to tie two of the Middle East’s most intractable diplomatic puzzles into a single knot. In a Truth Social post on May 25, he urged Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Muslim-majority nations to join the Abraham Accords and formally recognize Israel, framing the move as a prerequisite for any deal emerging from ongoing Iran negotiations.
The word he used was “mandatory.”
The conference call that started it all
Two days before the public push, on May 23, Trump held a conference call with leaders from eight nations: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan. The topic was Iran, and Trump described the negotiations as progressing favorably.
Trump is essentially conditioning the Iran framework on a massive expansion of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab nations that were first brokered during his first term in office.
