# Abraham Accords The **Abraham Accords** are the normalization agreements between [[Israel]] and Arab states brokered by the first Trump administration and signed at the White House on **September 15, 2020** — the [[UAE]] and [[Bahrain]] first, then Morocco (December 2020) and [[Sudan]] (January 2021, never ratified). They were the first Arab recognitions of Israel since Jordan in 1994, and they were built on a trade: the Emirates normalized in exchange for the suspension of the West Bank annexation that Trump's January 2020 peace plan had blessed; Morocco got U.S. recognition of its claim to Western Sahara; Sudan got off the state-sponsors-of-terrorism list. The Palestinians got nothing, which was the design — the Accords formalized a decade of quiet Israeli–Gulf cooperation against [[Iran]] and declared the Palestinian question no longer a precondition for anything. ## Where they came from Israeli–Gulf contact had been open enough to discuss in Arab media by 2016; [[Benjamin Netanyahu]] visited Oman in October 2018; the February 2019 Warsaw conference put Israeli and Arab officials in one room for the first time since Madrid in 1991. The Accords were negotiated by [[Jared Kushner]]'s White House team, and the name — for the shared patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam — was chosen to give an anti-Iran security alignment the language of reconciliation. Arab governments signed; Arab publics, polling showed, did not follow. ## The second term - **Expansion as war aim.** In July 2025 the administration was reported to be seeking [[Syria]], Lebanon and Saudi Arabia; in November 2025 [[Kazakhstan]] announced it would join — the first non-Arab, non-neighboring state, a sign the Accords had become a diplomatic brand rather than a regional settlement. In December 2025 Netanyahu recognized Somaliland, which pledged to join. - **The Iran war.** In May 2026, with the [[Iran War 2026]] in its ceasefire phase, Trump said Israel's neighbors should be required to sign the Accords and recognize Israel as part of any peace; the fourteen-point [[Trump-Iran MOU 2026]] of June 17 did not deliver that. The Accords' original premise — that Gulf states would align with Israel against Tehran — was tested by an actual war in which Iranian strikes hit [[Kuwait]], [[Bahrain]] and the Emirates, and the alignment held while the publics did not. ## Why they matter here For the American right the Accords are the proof-text that the foreign-policy establishment was wrong: peace through strength and through *bypassing* the Palestinians, delivered by a real-estate negotiator. [[Christians United for Israel]] and the [[Republican Jewish Coalition]] treat them as the first term's signature achievement; the Nobel-nomination campaign that recurs every autumn cites them first. The vault's interest is in what they are structurally — an arms-and-recognition exchange among monarchies, underwritten by American security guarantees, that moved the Israeli–Palestinian conflict from the center of Arab politics to its margin and then, after October 7, 2023, watched it move back. See [[Israeli History Hub]] and [[Oslo Accords]] for the settlement they replaced. ## See Also - [[Israel]] · [[UAE]] · [[Bahrain]] · [[Saudi Arabia]] · [[Iran]] · [[Kuwait]] - [[Benjamin Netanyahu]] · [[Jared Kushner]] · [[Donald Trump]] - [[Oslo Accords]] · [[Camp David Accords]] · [[Six-Day War]] · [[Israeli History Hub]] · [[Iran War 2026]] · [[Trump-Iran MOU 2026]]