TEL AVIV, Israel — It was the kind of sweeping, last-minute demand that would have torpedoed most diplomatic talks: President Donald Trump insisting this week that in exchange for him ending the war with Iran, several Arab and Muslim countries should sign on to his Abraham Accords to normalize their diplomatic relations with Israel.
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But there’s been almost no response from any of the countries that Trump mentioned by name — more than half of whom already have diplomatic relations with Israel — and no statement of support from an Israeli government that would reap enormous benefits from such a deal.
Analysts said Trump’s last-minute condition was so sudden and unworkable, it would appear to most diplomats as a kind of cry for help from a leader who is desperate to wring a legacy-defining victory from his unpopular war.
And instead of imperiling delicate negotiations by offending the countries Trump needs to help him make a deal, regional observers and diplomats said those countries simply aren’t taking Trump’s demand seriously at all.
“It’s gaslighting,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former senior State Department official under several American presidential administrations.
Miller likened Trump’s sudden focus on the Abraham Accords to his pledge to transform the Gaza Strip into a highly-developed luxury “Riviera” — a plan the administration has continued to advance even as Gaza’s humanitarian crisis persists amid gridlocked diplomacy.
A senior Arab official directly involved in mediating peace talks between Washington and Tehran told NBC News that Trump has brought up the Abraham Accords during the negotiations. “Someone is misunderstanding the situation in a big way,” the official said of the Trump’s comments. “We should be paid back, not paying the price.”
Indeed, several of countries the president mentioned, such as Turqiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Pakistan, may expect gratitude from the U.S. for having played crucial intermediary roles toward negotiating an end to the fighting.
“The Gulf states have already borne the economic and security costs of escalation,” said Asif Durrani, a Pakistani diplomat who once served as the country’s ambassador to Iran, on X. “Asking them to absorb additional political costs by normalising ties with Israel amid the Gaza tragedy risks deepening regional fault lines rather than healing them.”
And countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, and Bahrain have faced sustained Iranian counter-attacks even though they didn’t participate directly in the initial U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran.
