Talks have stalled in part because the president keeps aiming for a grand finale.
By Vivian Salama, Jonathan Lemire, and Nancy A. Youssef, The Atlantic
President Trump was on a conference call late last month from the Situation Room with leaders from across the Middle East and South Asia to pitch a deal that he believed was within reach to end the conflict in Iran. Trump asked for their support in a roll call, going one by one through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, and Pakistan. All answered in the affirmative. Trump’s tone, according to officials briefed on the conversation, suggested that he believed each country should be in his debt for taking on Iran. And he wanted their individual sign-off so he could claim a joint initiative to rein in the regime.
But then Trump reached for something bigger: He proposed linking the Iran negotiations to a major expansion of the Abraham Accords, the U.S.-brokered agreements normalizing relations between Israel and some of its neighbors that Trump regards as a signature foreign-policy achievement. He suggested that those countries that hadn’t yet joined the Abraham Accords get on board—but received a less than lukewarm response.
