The Trump administration appears to be operating from a diplomatic playbook that expired sometime around 2020. The president's renewed push for Arab states to recognize Israel—floated during meetings with Gulf leaders this week—has been met not with enthusiasm but with polite bewilderment, a reminder that the Abraham Accords momentum he once claimed credit for has thoroughly dissipated.
The timing could hardly be worse. With U.S. and Iranian forces exchanging strikes across the region and Gaza's civilian death toll continuing to climb, asking Saudi Arabia and other holdouts to embrace normalization reads less like strategic vision than political nostalgia.
The Abraham Accords are ancient history now
When the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco signed normalization agreements with Israel in 2020, the deals were sold as a transformative realignment of Middle Eastern politics. Trump treated them as a signature foreign policy achievement, proof that economic incentives and security partnerships could bypass the Palestinian question entirely.
That theory has not aged well. The agreements delivered commercial ties and direct flights, but they did not create the broader cascade of recognition that proponents promised. Saudi Arabia—the prize that would have made the framework genuinely historic—never signed. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made clear that Palestinian statehood remained a precondition, and the October 2023 Hamas attacks made any near-term deal politically impossible.
Why Gulf leaders aren't playing along
The regional calculus has shifted dramatically. Public opinion across the Arab world has hardened against Israel following the Gaza war, and even governments with quiet security ties to Jerusalem face domestic pressure to distance themselves. Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in positioning itself as a voice for Palestinian rights, a stance that would be undermined by normalization while conflict continues.
There is also the matter of leverage. Gulf states extracted significant concessions during the Abraham Accords negotiations—the UAE got F-35 fighters, Morocco got U.S. recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara. Any future deal would require similarly substantial inducements, and it is unclear what Washington is prepared to offer that it has not already given away.
Our take
Trump's Israel recognition push reveals a president more interested in recreating past headlines than grappling with present realities. The Middle East of 2026 is not the Middle East of 2020. Iran is actively exchanging fire with American forces, Gaza remains a humanitarian disaster, and Arab publics are watching. Demanding normalization now is not bold diplomacy—it is a request for Gulf leaders to set themselves on fire for an American domestic political talking point. Their reluctance is not baffling at all. It is entirely rational.
