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President Trump has been facing a lot of criticism from Iran hawks who are skeptical about his diplomatic approach to Iran, but he's leaning into that approach, connecting it to one of his first term successes, the so-called Abraham Accords. Those are the normalization deals between Arab countries and Israel that were in part aimed at countering Iran. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that Trump now wants to see more countries join.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: President Trump says he's trying to put a lot of pieces together in the Middle East, and he argues that it should be mandatory for countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar to sign normalization deals with Israel as part of an end to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: 'Cause it'll be historic if they do it. And we would - I think they owe that to us, to be honest. I think - 'cause that really would be a tremendous sign, and I think those countries owe it to us.
KELEMEN: As reporters shouted questions at his Cabinet meeting this week, Trump turned to his top negotiator, real estate developer Steve Witkoff.
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TRUMP: Steve, are you going to get them to sign?
STEVE WITKOFF: We're definitely pushing it, Mr. President.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I'm going to...
TRUMP: I'm not sure we should make the deal if they don't sign - you want to know the truth.
KELEMEN: Trump may be trying to find a kind of accomplishment coming out of this war, says Michael Ratney, a former career diplomat who was ambassador to Saudi Arabia until Trump returned to office.
MICHAEL RATNEY: He seems to think having more countries normalize relations with Israel might just be that accomplishment, but it's just not realistic to think that Saudi Arabia or Qatar or Pakistan, for that matter, are about to sign on to the Abraham Accords. They have their own calculations when it comes to establishing relations with Israel, and this war didn't make them any more inclined to do so. If anything, it may have made it harder.
KELEMEN: Ratney says the Saudis have made clear they won't sign a normalization deal with Israel without a clear pathway to Palestinian statehood. The war in Gaza and Israel's violence against Palestinians in the West Bank are pushing that goal further away, says Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.
BRIAN KATULIS: The real pathway to expanding the Abraham Accords runs not through Tehran, but through Ramallah and Gaza, the central file and main concern when Saudi Arabia or Qatar looks at perhaps joining a normalization accord with Israel. Their central concern is, is there a pathway to a two-state solution?
KELEMEN: There, too, President Trump has made bold statements, setting up a board of peace that's supposed to rebuild Gaza. But that work hasn't really started, and Palestinians currently have no path forward for a state of their own. So why does Trump keep talking about this when the prospects seem unlikely? Katulis calls it performative diplomacy - that Trump is making big statements to try to show his detractors that he has a plan for the Middle East.
KATULIS: With this Iran war, we've dug ourselves in a hole. We're trying to solve problems that didn't exist before the war began, like the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's control of it. And I think he's just trying to - he's grasping at straws to - you know, it hearkens back to something that he thinks fondly of. It was, in fact, a major accomplishment of his first term, but he's not looking at it in terms of the right pathway to - how to get from here to there.
KELEMEN: In his first term, the United Arab Emirates in Bahrain normalized relations with Israel, and those agreements have survived, despite the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. But Trump has long sought a bigger deal, that is getting Saudi Arabia to join in this process too. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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