Trump’s push to revive the Abraham Accords meets Arab silence and Saudi resistance

About two and a half weeks ago, President Donald Trump held a phone call with leaders from the Arab and Muslim world, from Saudi Arabia to Turkey, and told them he wanted them to join the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel. According to the article, the reaction on the line was silence, and Trump even joked, asking whether they were still there. He later made the same message public in a long post on Truth Social, saying he had spoken with leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain, and that it should be “mandatory” for those states to join the accords. He said he had instructed his representatives to work on expanding the agreements.

The article says the call and the post show Trump’s renewed desire to expand what he sees as his biggest Middle East achievement, the accords signed during his first term. But it argues that the plan now runs into Arab resistance, Israeli unwillingness to compromise, and the continuing fallout from the war with Iran. Former senior US State Department official Barbara Leaf said people on the call were “stunned into silence,” including Jordanian and Egyptian leaders, even though both countries already have full peace ties with Israel.

Only Pakistan publicly broke the silence. Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said Islamabad did not want to join an agreement that contradicts its principles and had not sought participation in the accords. The piece recalls that the Abraham Accords, launched with Jared Kushner’s diplomacy, brought the UAE and Bahrain in September 2020, then Morocco and Sudan, and later Kazakhstan in November 2025. The deals offered incentives ranging from advanced US weapons to diplomatic recognition, including US and Israeli recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

The main obstacle is Saudi Arabia. Analysts quoted in the article say that before October 7, 2023, Riyadh was moving toward normalization and had been willing to consider it in exchange for only a verbal commitment to a Palestinian state. Since the Gaza war, Saudi public opinion has hardened sharply, with an August 2025 Washington Institute poll showing 99 percent of Saudis viewed normalization with Israel as negative, compared with 41 percent in 2020, 20 percent in 2023 and 13 percent in 2025. Saudi leaders now demand irreversible progress toward a Palestinian state, and Trump’s pressure, the article says, is unlikely to change that soon.