For President Trump, negotiating an end to the war with Iran has proven to be the most difficult endeavor of his second term. U.S. and Iranian officials continue to work to clinch an agreement that would trade a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz for an end to the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports and a suspension of the war over a 60-day time period, during which detailed talks on Tehran’s nuclear program could be hashed out.
While the overall concept of a framework agreement is sound, the details, including how much of Iran’s frozen assets will be unblocked and when they will be released, remain sources of contention. The U.S. defensive strikes against Iranian boats and missile batteries — in what the Trump administration has called retaliation for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ attempted mining of the strategic chokepoint — have only added to the complications.
Trump, however, is keen to make the entire diplomatic process even more laborious. He wants a more historic outcome: ending the conflict, severely constraining Iran’s nuclear capabilities and expanding the Abraham Accords, his first-term project that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states. In a May 25 Truth Social post, Trump made those ambitions clear. After speaking with the leaders of the Gulf States, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan, Trump wrote, “It should be mandatory” for all these countries to sign on to an updated version of the accords.
When Trump brought up the idea during his conference call, an uncomfortable silence lingered in the air. Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its position that normalization with Israel was impossible until the Palestinians were offered an “irreversible pathway” to statehood. The Pakistanis were even more empathic in their resistance to the proposal. Qatar, which was on the receiving end of an Israeli airstrike last September, rejected it as well.
Surely none of this should be a surprise to Trump. The Middle East of 2026 is a lot different than the Middle East of 2020, when the accords were consummated. Back then, a growing number of Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were not actively exploring the prospect of normalization. Israel was viewed not only as an established power in its own right, but also a beacon of entrepreneurship and the epitome of a startup nation. Israel also shared a mutual adversary in Iran, whose regional proxies militias and nuclear program were a constant cause for concern.
The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks against Israel, and Israel’s subsequent two-year military campaign in Gaza, changed those calculations virtually overnight.
The Middle East of 2026 is a lot different than the Middle East of 2020, when the accords were consummated.
Before Oct. 7, Israeli and Saudi officials were working through the United States, then led by the Biden administration, to establish formal relations with each other. Then-President Joe Biden was so enamored about a possible Israel-Saudi normalization pact that he was willing to offer Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman — the very man he called a pariah during the 2020 presidential campaign — the kinds of U.S. defense guarantees that past Saudi royals could only dream of.
Once the war in Gaza was underway, however, the Saudis changed their tune. The Saudi political and security establishment increasingly viewed formal relations with Israel as not only inappropriate at a time when Israeli bombs were killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians every week, but also potentially dangerous to the Saudis’ internal stability. They may very well have been right: the Saudi public was highly opposed to normalization, and the fact that Gaza was becoming a wasteland of despair and destitution appeared to dissuade the crown prince from being willing to manage the negative domestic politics associated with such a move. Plus, the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear program in June 2025, coupled with Hezbollah’s growing weakness in Lebanon, Bashar Assad’s collapse in Syria a year earlier and Riyadh’s decision to explore detente with Tehran meant the Saudi government no longer saw Iran the same way it did years earlier.
As long as Israel continues to occupy more than half of Gaza and a significant portion of southern Lebanon, it is highly likely Saudi Arabia will continue to brush Trump’s requests aside. And as long as the Saudis don’t move, it’s unlikely other states — be they Pakistan, Qatar or Kuwait — will move either.
Why, then, is Trump harping on the Abraham Accords?
The first motivation is political. As talks toward a framework with Iran continue, Trump wants to cover his bases on the homefront and ensure the hawkish wing of his party is satisfied. Despite Trump’s stronghold over the Republican Party, there is a vocal faction that considers any agreement short of full Iranian surrender as the epitome of Neville Chamberlain-esque appeasement. Senior Republican lawmakers were aghast over the weekend when nuggets of the framework deal were presented in the press, with Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ted Cruz of Texas and Roger Wicker of Mississippi all coming out to pan it.
In an ideal world, Trump wouldn’t listen to any of them. These are the same people, after all, who lobbied Trump to authorize a military campaign against Iran in the expectation that the regime would either collapse entirely or respond to the pressure by suing for peace on Washington’s terms. Those terms, presumably, would include a total ban on Iranian enrichment, the removal of Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and a 180-degree change in Iran’s foreign policy. This was naive at best, yet Trump bought the argument and was poorly served by doing so.
Even so, Trump wants unanimous support from his party for any agreement he strikes — and appears to have concluded it will take some honey to get there. By tying the Abraham Accords to an Iran framework, the thinking goes, the administration will be able to attract lawmakers, like the Lindsey Grahams of the world, who would otherwise be disgusted by the idea of conceding anything to the Iranians.
The other motivation is about legacy. The last thing Trump wants is to sign an agreement with Iran that is perceived to be boring or noninnovative.
Currently, that’s precisely what’s occurring.
As long as Israel continues to occupy more than half of Gaza and a significant portion of southern Lebanon, it is highly likely Saudi Arabia will continue to brush Trump’s requests aside.
The U.S. and Iran are seeking to return the region to the pre-February status quo, when 150 or so vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz every day, the U.S. Navy didn’t have to expend limited resources on enforcing a blockade and the two sides could get back to the business of negotiating a final-status arrangement on Tehran’s nuclear program without missiles flying between them. That’s probably the best Trump can do, at this point, because the alternative, which would entail bringing the nuclear question into the framework, risks jeopardizing the entire diplomatic effort.
Still, if the preliminary deal currently on offer simply rewinds the clock by three months and gets us to the same position we were in before the war started, how exactly could Trump sell this as a groundbreaking win? The straightforward answer is that he can’t. Use the time to pad the Abraham Accords, though, and he would have a stronger foundation to celebrate.
In the end, all of this might be irrelevant. Even if the war in Iran concludes, Trump will be hard pressed to transform the Middle East into one big, happy family.
Daniel R. DePetris
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.