Trump urges Middle East nations to join Abraham Accords as mandatory step for a broader Iran peace settlement, citing recent calls with leaders.
WASHINGTON (United States): US President Donald Trump recast his bid for peace with Iran on Monday as an attempt to strike a grand bargain across the Middle East, urging Muslim-majority countries from the region and beyond to settle their disputes with Israel.
In a lengthy social media post, Trump listed countries whose leaders he spoke with in a conference call on Saturday about efforts to end the war with Iran.
“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,” he wrote.
“Those Countries discussed are Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (already a Member!), Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain (already a Member!)”
The Abraham Accords, a set of agreements brokered under Trump in 2020, govern the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and countries that have historically been hostile to it.
While the accords were welcomed in diplomatic circles as a step towards a more peaceful Middle East, they remain unpopular among the public in many parts of the region, not least because they do not address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Trump in November 2025 that the kingdom was open to joining the Abraham Accords, as long as there was “a clear path” toward a two-state solution.
Trump said most countries he spoke to “should be ready, willing, and able to make this Settlement with Iran a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be.”
“It should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and everybody else should follow suit. If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intention,” he wrote.
Trump even implied that Israel’s bitter enemy — Iran — should sign on to the accords.
Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said it was very unlikely Trump’s appeal would succeed, partly because of regional rivalries between nations.
“It seems to me highly unlikely in the near term you’re going to see any broadening of these accords,” he said.
“The Saudis are not going to join the Abraham Accords. The Saudi-Emirati rivalry prevents that,” he said. “What’s in it for the Gulf states in agreeing to normalize with Israel?”
Miller pointed out that Trump made the same request in the wake of the October 2025 agreement between Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza.
Over the three-day US holiday weekend, Trump and his top diplomat Marco Rubio have offered varying assessments of the timing of a deal to end the Iran war, at times suggesting it was imminent.
While Trump said Monday that negotiations with Iran were “proceeding nicely,” Iran warned that it was not yet close to an agreement.
Iran’s top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf arrived in Qatar on Monday as part of the “diplomatic process” to end the war with the United States, state media reported.
