WASHINGTON:
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 countries in the region and beyond to settle their disputes with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, as he seeks to negotiate an agreement to end the war with Iran.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump listed countries whose leaders he said he had spoken to on a conference call on Saturday about efforts to end the war, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which have already signed the accords.
“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,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post.
“I am mandatorily requesting that all countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords, and that, if Iran signs its agreement with me, as President of the United States of America, it would be an honour to have them also be part of this unparalleled world coalition,” Trump added.
The Abraham Accords, a set of agreements brokered under Trump in 2020, govern the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Israel and countries that have not recognised it. The accords, however, remain unpopular among public opinion in the region as they do not address the Palestinian issue.
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”, he added.
“If they don’t, they should not be part of this deal, in that it shows bad intention,” he wrote. Trump also implied that Israel’s bitter enemy, Iran, should sign on to the accords. He said negotiations with Iran were “proceeding nicely” but gave no indication that a deal was imminent.
Meanwhile, Iran’s top negotiator and its foreign minister were in Doha for talks with Qatar’s prime minister on a potential deal with the United States to end the three-month-old war, an official briefed on the visit said on Monday, after Washington and Tehran played down hopes of an imminent breakthrough.
The official told Reuters the discussions focused primarily on the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, while Iran’s central bank governor attended to discuss the potential release of frozen Iranian funds as part of a final deal.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said earlier that nuclear issues would only be negotiated if the framework accord is agreed first. Baghaei said the potential Iran deal contained no specific details on management of the Strait of Hormuz.
Separately, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian ordered the restoration of international internet access in Iran, which had been suspended since the United States and Israel launched attacks against the country, local media reported on Monday.
