U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday threw a fresh wrench into protracted Middle East peace negotiations, declaring that Saudi Arabia and several other Muslim-majority nations must normalize diplomatic relations with Israel as a condition for a final peace settlement with Iran.
Progress to end the conflict, which erupted in late February, has encountered significant friction. Both Washington and Tehran have recently downplayed expectations of an imminent breakthrough, with Iranian officials stating a deal is not yet close and Trump warning he is in no hurry to sign.
In a major shift that adds a new dimension to the diplomatic track, Trump insisted on social media that it should be “mandatory” for Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan to join the Abraham Accords—the 2020 normalization frameworks brokered during his first term between Israel and historically hostile regional states.
”After all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post. “Those Countries discussed are Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (already a Member!), Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain (already a Member!)”
The American leader revealed he held a conference call on Saturday with heads of state from the discussed nations. While the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are already foundational members of the accords alongside Morocco and Sudan, countries like Egypt and Jordan have separate, long-standing peace treaties with Israel.
The surprise prerequisite surfaces while American and Iranian forces observe a tenuous ceasefire enacted on April 8. Despite the diplomatic push, geopolitical friction remains high; Tehran continues to enforce rigid controls over Gulf shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, while the U.S. Navy maintains a tight blockade on Iranian ports.
Trump doubled down on his aggressive negotiating strategy earlier on Monday, warning that a pact with Iran would either be “great and meaningful” or there would be “no deal.”
However, the unilateral demand faces deep resistance across the Middle East. The Abraham Accords remain deeply unpopular among the broader Arab public, largely because they bypass the core Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Qatar have repeatedly affirmed that formal ties with Israel are completely off the table without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
Anna Jacobs, a senior analyst at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, warned that Trump’s latest ultimatum exacerbates what has already been a catastrophic multilateral security crisis for Gulf nations.
”The national security of the Gulf states has been threatened more than ever before because of President Trump’s reckless decisions, and he expects Arab states to thank him and to normalize relations with Israel, which they will not do at this stage,” Jacobs said. “These expectations and assumptions from this US administration shows how little they understand the Middle East.”