The Abraham Accords – Trump's prestige project is crumbling: Why Arab sheiks are only sending laughing emojis now

When sheiks laugh and hardliners remain silent — Trump's biggest prestige project put to the test

Israel, Iran and the Gulf States: The bitter reality behind the facade of the Abraham Accords

The Abraham Accords were considered a historic milestone at their signing and Donald Trump's greatest foreign policy prestige project. But almost six years after the celebratory ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, a look behind the scenes reveals a sobering picture. While trade relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates are flourishing, the escalating conflicts in the Middle East are ruthlessly exposing the serious design flaws of the agreement. Above all, the deliberate exclusion of the Palestinian question is increasingly proving to be a structural time bomb for the entire region. When Trump attempted to expand the agreement with new, almost absurd demands in May 2026, he was met with nothing but ridicule and laughing emojis in Arab diplomatic circles. Is this much-lauded architecture of peace in reality just a diplomatic facade? An in-depth analysis reveals what the agreement is actually achieving today – and why, while not yet dead, it is dramatically losing its substance.

The Abraham Accords: Peace architecture or diplomatic facade?

On May 25, 2026, Donald Trump posted a demand on his platform Truth Social that immediately raised eyebrows in diplomatic circles: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan should—simultaneously and on a binding basis—join the Abraham Accords. Anyone refusing, he claimed, was demonstrating "evil intentions." And, as the crowning touch: Iran, Israel's declared arch-enemy, could also join the agreement after a potential peace settlement. What was intended as a major diplomatic coup ended with a long pause in the conference call—and laughing emoji responses from Arab government officials to former US officials. This episode exemplifies what the Abraham Accords have become after almost six years of existence: a serious diplomatic tool with real economic results—and at the same time, a political instrument that is structurally reaching its limits.

Origin and architecture: What lies behind the name

On September 15, 2020, representatives of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Israel signed normalization agreements in the Rose Garden of the White House, formalizing diplomatic relations between these states. The name "Abraham Accords" derives from the biblical figure of Abraham, considered a common patriarch in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—a symbol of religious connection intended to lend the agreement historical depth. Morocco joined in December 2020, followed by Sudan in January 2021, though internal political instability there has delayed full implementation to this day.

The document itself comprises only about two pages and remains vague in its content. It essentially consists of declarations of intent regarding peace, a willingness to engage in dialogue, and cooperation in the fields of science, art, medicine, and economics. Concrete commitments, enforcement mechanisms, or binding timelines are largely absent. This has been both the strength and the weakness of the agreement from the outset: its non-binding nature facilitated its signing but simultaneously prevented its deep institutional anchoring.

Conceptually, the agreement was a further development of the “Peace to Prosperity” workshop initiated by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Bahrain in June 2019. The underlying idea was that economic incentives and an alignment of geopolitical interests could overcome political deadlocks—without requiring a resolution of the Palestinian question as a precondition. This conceptual approach would prove to be a fundamental design flaw.

The geopolitical context: Iran as the actual glue

To understand the Abraham Accords from an economic and geopolitical perspective, one must identify their true motivation: It was not primarily affection for Israel, but rather their shared enmity toward Iran that brought the Gulf states to the negotiating table. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain saw a tacit security partnership with Israel as a means of countering Iranian influence in the region—through proxies such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Washington positioned itself as a protecting power and guarantor, with the clear objective of offsetting China's growing influence in advanced technology in the region.

This context of interests explains why the agreements worked in their original form: they did not require the Arab signatory states to rethink their stance on the Palestinian question, but merely to formally acknowledge that Israel exists—and is a useful partner against their common enemy. Bilateral relations between the UAE and Bahrain, on the one hand, and Israel, on the other, were substantially expanded in the first three years after the agreements were signed, particularly through cooperation in economics, the environment, and security.

The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between Israel and the UAE, signed in 2022 and finalized in 2023, eliminated tariffs on over 96 percent of traded goods. It was the fastest-tracked free trade agreement in Israel's history. The Emirati Ministry of Economy stated its goal of increasing the trade value to ten billion US dollars annually within five years.

Economic reality: What the numbers really say

The economic results of the Abraham Accords are real—but unevenly distributed and, measured against the original promises, sobering. Total trade between Israel and the four signatory states between 2021 and 2024 amounted to: UAE $6.44 billion, Morocco $575.9 million, and Bahrain a mere $50.4 million. The UAE is thus by far the dominant trading partner—Bahrain and Morocco have so far played a marginal economic role.

For the first five months of 2024, the Abraham Accords Peace Institute reported the following trade volumes: Trade between Israel and the UAE amounted to US$1.39 billion (an increase of 8 percent compared to the same period of the previous year), trade with Bahrain reached US$53.7 million (up 933 percent—albeit from a very low starting point, which distorts percentage figures), and trade with Morocco was US$53.2 million (up 64 percent). In the first seven months of 2024, bilateral trade between Israel and the UAE totaled US$1.92 billion—4 percent higher than in the same period of the previous year, but significantly below the growth rate of 2022 and 2023.

Total trade between Israel and the UAE amounted to approximately US$3.2 billion in 2024—a considerable figure, but far from the target of US$10 billion by 2028. This target seems modest for two economies that together generate over US$1 trillion in economic output. By comparison, Germany handles comparable volumes with a single medium-sized trading partner within just a few months.

Trade-related cooperation extends to sectors such as technology, agricultural technology, cybersecurity, medicine, and finance. Israeli startups opened up new markets, and Emirati sovereign wealth funds invested in Israeli tech companies. In the area of ​​renewable energy and green technology, cooperation with Morocco proved particularly promising. While the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war led to an overall decline in Israeli trade of 18 percent, trade volume with the Abraham Accord states fell by only 4 percent—an indication of the partnership's economic resilience.

This finding is analytically significant: trade and investment have developed a certain inherent logic that outlasts short-term political upheavals. Merchants, fund managers, and companies derive economic benefits from the normalization—and this inherent economic drive acts as a stabilizer. However, it would be a mistake to infer political depth from this.

The Palestinian vacuum: The blind spot in the agreement

The most serious structural flaw of the Abraham Accords lies in what they deliberately omit. For the first time in decades, Arab states normalized their relations with Israel without making a solution to the Palestinian question a precondition. This effectively buried the Arab Peace Initiative agreed upon in Beirut in 2002—the agreement under which Arab states would only recognize Israel if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories and allowed for a Palestinian state.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the agreements as "treason." Hamas called it a "stab in the back." This reaction was not merely rhetorical: the agreements signaled to the Israeli leadership that diplomatic recognition was possible without making concessions to the Palestinian population. This structurally weakened the Palestinians' negotiating position. Several analysts argue that the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, was not only intended to harm Israel but also to torpedo the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel that was emerging at the time.

A Carnegie report found that the agreements were designed to circumvent the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—effectively normalizing the Israeli occupation without offering any prospects for Palestinian sovereignty. This systemic flaw is now returning with full force: As long as Arab populations see the images of the Gaza war, Arab governments face immense political pressure not to publicly pursue normalization with Israel. The price of supporting the Abraham Accords has risen dramatically for Arab governments.

October 7th as a stress test: What held up and what broke

The Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and the Israeli counter-offensive in the Gaza Strip presented the Abraham Accords with their most severe test. The outcome is ambivalent. At the institutional level, the agreements held: ambassadors remained in their posts, trade relations were not officially severed, and air links continue to exist. The UAE and Bahrain, in particular, kept their diplomats in Tel Aviv.

At the strategic and public levels, however, considerable damage was done. Paradoxically, April 14, 2024, demonstrated a benefit of the agreements: when Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel using missiles and drones, the UAE and Saudi Arabia shared intelligence and cooperated in the defense. This illustrated that the security dimension of the agreements remained functional despite the war in Gaza.

However, public loyalty conflicts erupted in the signatory states. In Bahrain, daily demonstrations in support of the Palestinians took place, and the Bahraini foreign minister felt compelled to strongly condemn Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip. In the UAE, where social media is strictly regulated, posts in support of the Palestinians nevertheless circulated widely. The Israeli attack on a Hamas office in Doha in September 2025—the first Israeli attack on a Gulf capital—fundamentally shook the sense of security in the region and drove Arab states into a common emergency stance.

The UAE banned Israeli arms companies from the Dubai Airshow and warned that Israel's annexation plans in the West Bank could jeopardize bilateral relations. Emirati and Bahraini officials described themselves as "disappointed and frustrated" that Israel had put them in an "embarrassing position." So the agreements live on—but their substance is increasingly being eroded.

Our global industry and economic expertise in business development, sales and marketing - Image: Xpert.Digital

Industry focus areas: B2B, digitalization (from AI to XR), mechanical engineering, logistics, renewable energies and industry

More information here:

• Expert Business Hub

A thematic hub offering insights and expertise:

• Knowledge platform covering global and regional economies, innovation and industry-specific trends
• A collection of analyses, insights, and background information from our key areas of focus
• A place for expertise and information on current developments in business and technology
• A hub for companies seeking information on markets, digitalization, and industry innovations

Structural weaknesses: Five design flaws

The weaknesses of the Abraham Accords are not accidental—they lie in the very design of the project. A systematic analysis reveals five key design flaws that limit its long-term effectiveness.

The first mistake, as already explained, is the lack of a Palestinian solution. Excluding the Palestinian conflict has created a structural time bomb: as long as no progress towards a two-state solution is discernible, every step towards normalization remains delegitimized for Arab populations and politically costly for Arab governments.

The second flaw is the extreme asymmetry between the partner states. The economic relationship with the UAE bears the entire burden, while Bahrain and Morocco have barely established significant trade volumes. Such over-reliance on a single partnership makes the construct fragile: A serious crisis between Israel and the UAE would shake the entire economic foundation of the agreements.

The third mistake is the domestic legitimacy crisis in the signatory states. In Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE, there is considerable social resistance to normalization, which has been massively intensified by the Gaza war. Governments acting without democratic legitimacy can ignore this sentiment in the short term—but in the long run, it is politically explosive, especially if Israel continues to escalate military actions that provoke Arab populations.

The fourth mistake is the dependence on a single American security guarantee. The Abraham Accords were also understood by the Arab signatory states as a signal from the US that Washington guaranteed their security. Trump's unpredictable foreign policy, which sometimes courts Riyadh, sometimes exerts pressure, and sometimes signals concessions to Iran, has significantly damaged this trust. The strategic difference between Trump's confrontational course toward Iran and the Gulf states' desire for de-escalation with Tehran became glaringly obvious in 2025.

The fifth mistake is the fundamental weakness of the contract text itself. Two parties, no binding obligations, no enforcement mechanisms. What was sold as flexibility is, in practice, non-binding. If an agreement is so legally vague that neither party is obligated to comply with it, it is not an agreement—but merely a declaration of intent.

The Saudi Question: The Uncrowned Crown Jewel

The true strategic target of the Abraham Accords was never Bahrain or Morocco—it was Saudi Arabia. A normalization of relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem would fundamentally alter the regional dynamics of the Middle East: the religious and political center of Sunni Islam, custodian of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, the country with the world's largest oil reserves—if Saudi Arabia were to officially recognize Israel, Trump would indeed have made history.

In the months leading up to October 7, 2023, this scenario seemed within reach. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman no longer ruled out public relations with Israel. Negotiations were underway behind the scenes. The subsequent failure was all the more dramatic. Following the Gaza War, Saudi Arabia declared unequivocally that it would not establish relations with Israel until the Israeli leadership agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state. A Saudi source put it even more precisely to international media: normalization required an “irreversible path” to Palestinian statehood.

The structural obstacles to a Saudi-Israeli rapprochement are immense. Riyadh would demand concrete US security guarantees in the form of a defense pact as a condition for signing an agreement—something the US Senate would likely not ratify at present. At the same time, Saudi-Emirati rivalry paradoxically prevents a swift Saudi-Israeli normalization: What the UAE has gained in economic terms, Riyadh cannot simply replicate under identical conditions. Carnegie Senior Fellow Aaron David Miller succinctly summarized the situation: What is the point for the Gulf states of normalizing with Israel now, as long as Israel makes no concessions on the Palestinian issue?

Trump's expansion demand from May 2026: Political calculation instead of diplomacy

Trump's demand of May 25, 2026, to simultaneously include a number of Muslim states in the Abraham Accords—and even to link this to the ongoing Iran negotiations—is, from a sober analytical perspective, less a diplomatic initiative than a domestic political maneuver. According to analysts at the International Crisis Group, Trump attempted to package the Iran deal as "Abraham Accords Season 2"—to make it more acceptable to Republican hardliners who feared too many concessions from Iran. Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump confidant, had previously questioned why the war had been started in the first place if negotiations were now taking place.

A Gulf diplomat told Politico: “It’s a clever tactic to appease the angry base. He’ll keep bringing it up. But it won’t be part of the agreement.” When a former US government official heard about Trump’s demands, he sent joking messages to Arab government officials—and received laughing emojis in return.

Pakistan publicly rejected the demand. Defense Minister Khawaja Asif stated clearly that he did not believe Pakistan would be part of such agreements. Saudi Arabia remained officially silent. Qatar, which also acts as a neutral mediator in Hamas negotiations, sees its mediating role threatened by a potential accession to the Abraham Accords. Mentioning Iran as a possible signatory to the agreements is considered in diplomatic circles to be mere wishful thinking: Hostility towards Israel is a central tenet of Iranian state doctrine.

The demand even threatened to jeopardize the ongoing Iran peace process. Government officials in the Middle East saw it as a "poisoned pill"—new conditions for peace that neither Iran nor the states concerned would accept.

The Iran dimension: When the glue dissolves

It is not without a certain historical irony that the Iran-Israeli War of 2026—which, according to the Abraham Accords, was always seen as the unified enemy that held the Arab-Israeli partnership together—now threatens to destabilize the very foundation of the agreement. As long as Iran was perceived as a threat and the US security pledge was considered credible, Gulf states had reason to stand with Israel and the US. The Israeli bombing of a Gulf capital—Doha—fundamentally altered this assessment. Now, Gulf states found themselves confronted with a regional power that no longer appeared as a reliable partner, but rather as a potential direct security threat.

A KAS study on the first Trump administration precisely analyzed the emerging strategic tensions: While Trump pursued a policy of confrontation with Iran and an expansion of the Abraham Accords, the Gulf states pursued a policy of de-escalation towards Tehran and demanded progress on the Palestinian question. This divergence is not a misunderstanding that can be communicated—it is a fundamental conflict of interest that cannot be bridged by rhetorical gestures.

Opportunities and limitations: A sober assessment

Despite all the justified criticism, it would be analytically dishonest to ignore the real achievements of the Abraham Accords. For the first time since the peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), Arab states officially normalized their relations with Israel. Embassies were opened, trade relations institutionalized, and commercial air links established. The joint defense against the Iranian missile attack in April 2024 demonstrated effective security cooperation. The trade volume between Israel and the UAE, exceeding three billion US dollars in 2024, is economically significant despite the war in Gaza.

The most significant contribution of these agreements lies perhaps less in their immediate economic indicators than in their standardizing effect: they have demonstrated that Arab-Israeli cooperation is possible—and have thus changed a framework of thought that had seemed frozen for decades. Under the influence of these agreements, a new generation of economic actors emerged in the region, one that has a vested interest in their continuation.

However, the limitations are equally clear. Any normalization based on the Abraham Accords remains a Sisyphean task—a constantly repeated and never-ending effort—as long as there is no credible commitment to the recognition of a Palestinian state. Economic ties cannot permanently compensate for political delegitimization. Expansion into new countries—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey—is not realistic under the current conditions.

Is this a prestige bubble? A nuanced answer

The question of whether the Abraham Accords are ultimately a prestige project for Trump cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. They are, insofar as Trump marketed the agreements domestically as an epochal breakthrough for peace, while systematically ignoring the structural problems. The image of the celebratory signing ceremony at the White House masked what was, in fact, a trade agreement with a geopolitical marketing label. The rhetoric of a "new Middle East" ignored the fact that 70 percent of the Arab population rejected the agreements because they excluded the Palestinian question.

It is not merely a prestige bubble insofar as real economic and security ties have been established, which have not completely collapsed even under the pressure of the Gaza war. Trade is flowing, embassies are open, intelligence agencies are cooperating. This substance is not nothing. But it is far less than what was promised, and significantly less than what would be necessary to fundamentally transform the Middle East.

What remains is a characteristic hybrid: genuine diplomatic progress, ideologically inflated and strategically underfunded. An agreement whose substance is to be taken seriously—but whose marketing remains open to critical scrutiny. The sheikhs who respond to Trump with laughing emojis are not reflecting contempt for the agreement—but rather skepticism toward the attempt to portray it as a cosmic peace project when, at the same time, Gulf capitals are being bombed and Palestinian civilians are dying. This is not a rejection of trade with Israel—it is a rejection of diplomatic co-optation without any return.

Between resilience and regression

The five-year review of the Abraham Accords as of September 2025 was sobering, even bleak, in diplomatic circles. Not a single new Arab state has joined the agreement since 2020—with the exception of Kazakhstan's announcement, which has maintained diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992. The "crown jewel," Saudi Arabia, is further away than ever. In its fifth year, the agreement is under the greatest pressure since its signing.

At the same time, a complete collapse of the existing agreements is unlikely. The economic interests are too real, the security ties too deep, and abandoning them too politically costly. What is emerging is an interim phase: The agreement will be preserved within its existing boundaries, without making any significant progress. Large-scale Arab-Israeli normalization remains a distant scenario, contingent on a genuine solution to the Palestinian question.

European politicians see a need for action in this context: According to a 2024 survey, 85 percent of German and 77 percent of European parliamentarians support using the Abraham Accords to promote the reconstruction process in Gaza and the peace process in the region. The EU could act as an additional guarantor power—a potential that has been systematically underestimated to date.

The Abraham Accords are neither the historic turning point Trump hails them as, nor the total failure their harshest critics describe them as. They are what complex geopolitical realities often produce: an incomplete, contradictory, but not irrelevant instrument—one that can either be built upon as a bridge or reduced to mere scenery, depending on whether diplomatic skill or political theater prevails.

The quasi-in-house solution: How Xpert.Digital closes operational gaps in B2B marketing and sales – Smart Content-Driven Business - Image: Xpert.Digital

Xpert.Digital is a data-driven B2B industry hub led by Konrad Wolfenstein . The company acts as an external, quasi-in-house solution for industrial partners, closing operational gaps in marketing, content, and sales – without requiring additional resources on the client side.

More information here:

• The quasi-in-house solution: How Xpert.Digital closes operational gaps in B2B marketing and sales – Smart Content-Driven Business

☑️ Our business language is English or German

☑️ NEW: Correspondence in your native language!

Konrad Wolfenstein

I and my team are happy to be available to you as your personal advisor.

You can contact me by filling out the contact form here simply call me at +49 7348 4088 965. My email address is [email protected]:or

I'm looking forward to our joint project.

☑️ SME support in strategy, consulting, planning and implementation

☑️ Creation or realignment of the digital strategy and digitization

☑️ Expansion and optimization of international sales processes

☑️ Global & Digital B2B trading platforms

☑️ Pioneer Business Development / Marketing / PR / Trade Fairs