Iran victory gives Trump the chance to reshape Mid East with trade deals

Israel’s decisive victory over Iran’s Islamist regime has set Tehran’s nuclear plans back years at the least.

It has also created a unique opening to normalize ties between Jerusalem and the Arab world, via an expansion of President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords.

Without Iran breathing down their necks, its neighbors in the region — Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq — can focus on their own national interests.

That means peace with Israel, and racing to capture a bigger share of the regional and global knowledge economy.

Tehran’s plan has been to divide and torture.

Iran’s mullahs were the sponsors of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel; the Houthis’ war on Saudi Arabia and global economy; Bashar al-Assad’s fight against his own people; Lebanon’s fight for sovereignty against Hezbollah; and Iraq’s many divisions.

Without these anti-Israel distractions, there is room for change.

The 2020 accords were the diplomatic high point of the first Trump administration. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan all formally recognized Israel, becoming the first Arab states to do so in a quarter-century.

The war in Gaza made it impossible for any further Arab states to join the accords.

Yet today, some Arab countries that previously rejected any move toward peace with Israel are a “maybe.”

The primary motive for peace is the economy.

Leading a country battered by five decades of socialist tyranny that included 13 years of civil war, Syrian President Ahmad Sharaa has focused intently on economic revival. His recent peaceful overtures toward Israel are unprecedented since Syrian independence in 1946.

Sharaa and others who seek prosperity via peace are trying to emulate the UAE, whose economic hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi have become the envy of the region.

Realizing that new technology and a growing population required decisive moves away from dependence on oil exports, the UAE is now competing on the global stage for a bigger share of the service economy.

This new Emirati economic model requires stability and the maximal expansion of international ties: Enter peace with Israel.

The Arab League’s official position has been that Israel must withdraw from all territories captured in 1967 and allow the establishment of a Palestinian state before peace could be pursued.

Events on the ground made that impossible. The main Palestinian factions, the PLO and Hamas, were unwilling to talk to one another, let alone form a government.

By 2020, unwilling to wait for the Palestinians to unify, four Arab League members — the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — opted for bilateral peace through the Abraham Accords.

This aroused hopes that Saudi Arabia might be next to join. Its crown prince and de facto ruler Muhammad Bin Salman had begun modernizing Saudi Arabia at breakneck speed, emulating the Emirati model and hinting at the possibility of normalizing its relationship with Israel.

It would’ve been a major blow to Iran and Hamas if Riyadh joined the pact, given its unique role as guardian of Islam’s holiest sites and the influence of its unmatched oil wealth.

The fighting in Gaza, as both Iran and Hamas understood, produced pervasive images of Palestinian suffering — enough to stop the Saudis in their tracks, even though the war began with a massacre of Israelis.

After Oct. 7, the Saudis fell back on their old rhetoric, announcing that Riyadh would normalize ties with Jerusalem only after Palestinians were promised a state based on the 1967 territories.

Now, however, the situation on the ground has changed once again — bringing new hope for peace.

With his passion for making unexpected deals, Trump convinced four Arab capitals to sign the Abraham Accords.

Can he do it again? The precise path to expand the accords remains unclear, but Trump never seems to run out of tricks.

“Peace through strength” has been Trump’s foreign policy motto. Now that strength has served its purpose, peace between Israel and each one of the Arab governments should follow.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow with The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.