The President of the United States Donald Trump said something on Monday. He wants Saudi Arabia and some other countries where most people are Muslims to be friends with Israel. This is something he wants them to do because of the problems with Iran. This surprised a lot of people including diplomats from the United States and countries. Donald Trump and his team are trying to figure out how to make peace with Iran. He thinks that Saudi Arabia and these other Muslim countries should be friends with Israel, as part of this process. Trump made the demand in a lengthy social media post on May 25, 2026, as US and Iranian negotiators worked toward a ceasefire agreement that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had suggested could be finalised within days.
The announcement injected fresh uncertainty into negotiations that had appeared to be approaching a conclusion. An Arab diplomat told Middle East Eye that Trump seemed to be using normalisation as a “lubricant” — a mechanism to secure Israeli buy-in for any deal reached with Tehran.
Trump’s post was explicit about which countries he had in mind. “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,” he wrote. “Those Countries discussed are Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (already a Member!), Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain (already a Member!).”
The demand landed as Rubio, speaking to reporters during a visit to New Delhi, indicated a deal was within reach. “We thought we might have some news last night, maybe today,” he said, adding: “We have what I think is a pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the straits, get the straits open.” Crude oil prices fell six percent on Monday on optimism that an agreement was near.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei moved quickly to temper those expectations. “It is correct to say that we have reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion,” he told a weekly news briefing on Monday. “But to say that this means the signing of an agreement is imminent — no one can make such a claim.”
The Trump Abraham Accords made a situation that was already tricky more complicated. The Trump Abraham Accords were a deal and they made things harder. The situation was fragile, before the Trump Abraham Accords. Now it is even more delicate because of the Trump Abraham Accords. Several of the countries he named already maintain formal diplomatic relations with Israel. Egypt established ties in 1979, Jordan in 1994, and Turkey was the first Muslim-majority nation to recognise Israel, doing so in 1949. The UAE and Bahrain normalised relations with Israel under the original Abraham Accords in 2020, which Trump has long considered one of his administration’s signature foreign policy achievements.
Saudi Arabia’s position, however, remains the central obstacle. The kingdom had privately explored normalisation before October 7, 2023, in exchange for US weapons transfers and civil nuclear technology. Since then, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has publicly accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and has tied any recognition of Israel explicitly to the creation of a Palestinian state. Shortly after Trump’s post circulated on Monday, an unidentified Saudi source reiterated to several major US news outlets that Riyadh would only normalise ties with Israel if it agreed to “an irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state.” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had already rebuffed a similar request from Trump in November 2025 during a White House meeting, according to Middle East Eye.
The other countries on Trump’s list present their own complications. Qatar was struck by Israeli forces in September 2025, when Israel targeted Hamas negotiators in Doha. Pakistan, the Muslim world’s only nuclear-armed state, has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has maintained a consistently cold stance toward it. Including these nations in what Trump framed as a prerequisite condition drew immediate scepticism from both the US diplomat and the Arab diplomat who spoke to Middle East Eye.
Monday’s announcement came against the backdrop of an already delicate regional situation. Israel escalated its strikes on Lebanon on the same day, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing he had ordered the military to “crush” Hezbollah. Iran has insisted that any ceasefire agreement include Lebanon as part of its terms, adding another layer of complexity to the negotiations.
A high-level Iranian delegation, including the country’s top negotiator and foreign minister, was in Doha on Monday to discuss the terms of a potential agreement with the US and the release of Iranian frozen funds, according to US and Israeli media reports. US and Iranian forces have observed a shaky ceasefire since April 8, with both sides conducting competing blockades of the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s energy supply passes.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose government has taken a leading role in mediating the US-Iran negotiations, met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Monday. “The world is passing through a critical moment,” Sharif said, according to Pakistan’s state-run PTV channel.
Washington was closed because of the Memorial Day holiday. People were not working that day. At the time Washington was getting ready, for Eid al-Adha. Diplomacy was still going on in Washington even though it was a holiday. Whether Trump’s normalisation demand will become a formal precondition for any deal, or whether negotiators will treat it as a separate track, remains to be clarified by US officials. Both the US and Iran have signalled their intent to continue talks, with the Doha meetings expected to continue into the coming days.
