The Accord That Could Not Outrun a War: How the Iran Conflict Overtook Trump's Abraham Accords Gambit

Few diplomatic instruments in the modern Middle East have been launched with as much theatre as the Abraham Accords. When the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed normalization agreements with Israel on the White House lawn on September 15, 2020, the language used was sweeping, a new dawn, a foundation for comprehensive regional peace, an achievement nobody had thought possible.

Morocco and Sudan followed within months. Five years later, in late 2025, Kazakhstan became the first Central Asian state to associate itself with the framework, and by May 2026 the Trump administration was pressing an even more ambitious list, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt and Jordan, to sign on, with Trump himself floating the once unthinkable idea that Iran could eventually join too.

Yet barely weeks into that expansion push, the same conflict the Accords were quietly built to contain, hostility toward Iran, has instead exposed how fragile the entire architecture remains. The accord that promised to outlast its critics is now struggling to outrun the war unfolding around it.

A Framework Built Around Iran From the Start

The Abraham Accords were never strictly bilateral arrangements between Israel and its new partners. Court records and subsequent legislation show the underlying logic was always regional and security driven, aimed squarely at Iran. The 2021 Israel Relations Normalization Act explicitly directed Washington to encourage further normalization in recognition of what it called the shared threat posed by Iran, and a 2022 follow-up law pushed for an integrated missile defence system among Accord signatories. Israel was folded into US Central Command alongside the UAE and Bahrain, knitting military and intelligence cooperation together outside ordinary diplomatic channels. That architecture, built in the name of stability, instead created the connective tissue for a far more dangerous escalation, including Israel's assassination of an Iranian general in Damascus in 2023, the missile and drone exchanges that followed, and full-scale war between Israel, the United States and Iran in June 2025 and again in February 2026.

The Expansion Push Collides With the Battlefield

It was against this backdrop that Trump, in the final days of May 2026, tried to convert a fragile, still unsigned Iran ceasefire framework into a sweeping diplomatic win.

In a Truth Social post, he declared it should be mandatory for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt and Jordan to simultaneously join the Accords, warning that any state which refused would be showing bad intention. The reaction inside the very call where he raised it was telling. American officials described an uncomfortable silence on the line, with Trump reportedly joking to ask if the assembled leaders were still there.

Saudi Arabia held its long-standing position that normalization could not proceed without an irreversible, time-bound path to Palestinian statehood, a condition Israel's current government has rejected outright. Pakistan's defence minister was, if anything, more emphatic, ruling out any arrangement that contradicted Islamabad's position on Palestine. Qatar, which had itself absorbed an Israeli strike in September 2025, declined as well.

The timing could hardly have been worse for the optics Washington wanted. A ceasefire with Iran that had been described as largely negotiated in late May had still not been formally signed more than a week later, with disputes lingering over the unblocking of frozen Iranian assets and the sequencing of a Strait of Hormuz reopening against a suspension of the US blockade on Iranian ports.

Analysts following the talks noted that linking an unfinished war settlement to a mandatory Accords expansion risked making an already difficult negotiation harder, not easier, by forcing Gulf and Muslim-majority governments to choose between their own domestic legitimacy on the Palestinian question and their relationship with Washington at the worst possible moment.

A Credibility Problem Older Than the Iran War

The deeper trouble is not simply bad timing. Public opinion data from inside the Accord countries themselves has long undercut the narrative of popular acceptance, with a 2022 survey finding the overwhelming majority of Saudi respondents held negative views of normalization even before October 2023. The Gaza war that followed Hamas's October 7 attack hardened that sentiment further, and intelligence recovered from Hamas documents has suggested its leadership saw the attack partly as a deliberate move to derail Saudi normalization talks before they could gain irreversible momentum.

Even existing signatories were not immune. The UAE and Bahrain both publicly criticised Israel's military campaign in Gaza, illustrating that signing the Accords had not purchased Israel insulation from regional and domestic criticism, only an unusually durable diplomatic relationship that survived the criticism intact.

Commentary published in early June 2026 went further, arguing that the entire premise of the May expansion push rested on what one analysis bluntly called a lie, that the Accords had brought genuine peace to the Middle East, when in fact every state that has signed has watched Israeli policy in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon grow more expansive since the ink dried, without any of them choosing to walk away.

What This Means for the Accords' Future

None of this means the Abraham Accords are finished. Kazakhstan's accession proves the framework still has room to grow where the underlying relationship carries little of the Palestinian baggage that complicates Gulf Arab politics. But the events of May and June 2026 mark a turning point in how the project is understood. What was sold in 2020 as self-sustaining peace architecture has instead revealed itself as conditional on a much harder and more violent process, the outcome of the Iran war, the unresolved status of Gaza, and the willingness of Gulf publics to accept normalization their governments still cannot fully sell at home. For a framework whose signature ceremonies have always generated more excitement than durability, tying its next chapter of expansion to the closing terms of an active war may turn out to be the clearest demonstration yet that the accords were built around Iran, and may now be unable to outlive a war fought because of it.

Mustapha Bature Sallama.
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal investigation and Intelligence Analysis.

International Conflict Management and Peace Building.USIP

mustysallama@gmail.com
+233-555-275-880
References
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Foreign Policy, "How the Abraham Accords Fueled a New Era of Conflict," May 7, 2026. https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/05/07/trump-iran-israel-saudi-arabia-uae-abraham-accords-conflict-palestine/

Axios, "Trump asked Muslim leaders to sign peace deal with Israel after Iran war ends," May 24, 2026. https://www.axios.com/2026/05/24/trump-iran-war-israel-muslim-countries-abraham-accords

The Federal, "What are Abraham Accords and why does Trump want them tied to Iran peace deal?" accessed June 21, 2026. https://thefederal.com/category/international/donald-trump-abraham-accords-arab-israel-deal-gaza-iran-tension-244457

TIME, "What to Know About the Abraham Accords as Trump Seeks Iran Deal," May 26, 2026. https://time.com/article/2026/05/26/abraham-accords-trump-peace-deal-us-israel-iran-war/

PassBlue, "The Abraham Accords: Obstacles to Peace in the Middle East," May 31, 2026. https://passblue.com/2026/05/31/the-abraham-accords-obstacles-to-peace-in-the-middle-east/

MSNBC, "An Iran deal is hard enough. Trump's Abraham Accords gambit is making it harder," May 26, 2026. https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-abraham-accords-iran-deal

Washington Post, "Trump seeks to widen Abraham Accords as new Iran deal faces sharp criticism," May 25, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/05/25/trump-seeks-widen-abraham-accords-new-iran-deal-faces-sharp-criticism/

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