The Abraham Accords: Surviving on Life Support While the Middle East Burns

Five years after their historic signing, the Abraham Accords have transformed from a beacon of regional transformation into a fragile arrangement sustained more by economic necessity than diplomatic enthusiasm.

A Promise Deferred

When Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords in September 2020, followed by Morocco and Sudan, the agreements were heralded as a seismic shift in Middle Eastern geopolitics. The Trump administration’s crowning foreign policy achievement promised to reshape regional dynamics, creating a new alliance of moderate states united by shared economic interests and concerns about Iranian expansion. Yet today, as the region convulses with multiple conflicts and rising tensions, these agreements appear less like a transformative peace process and more like a transactional arrangement struggling to maintain relevance.

The current Gaza conflict has exposed the fundamental contradictions at the heart of the Accords. While diplomatic relations technically remain intact, public sentiment in Gulf states has hardened dramatically against normalization. The UAE and Bahrain have been forced to walk a tightrope between maintaining security cooperation with Israel and responding to overwhelming domestic opposition to Israeli military actions. This balancing act has reduced the Accords to their bare minimum: maintaining formal ties while freezing most public-facing cooperation.

The Economic Lifeline

Despite the political chill, economic ties continue to provide the Accords with a lifeline. Trade between Israel and the UAE reached approximately $2.5 billion in 2023, a testament to the business community’s ability to compartmentalize political tensions from commercial opportunities. Israeli technology companies continue to operate in Dubai, and Emirati investors maintain their stakes in Israeli startups, particularly in cybersecurity and agricultural technology. This economic interdependence, built over the past five years, has created constituencies in both countries with vested interests in preventing a complete breakdown of relations.

Security cooperation, conducted largely away from public view, represents another pillar keeping the Accords from collapse. Intelligence sharing regarding Iranian activities continues, as does coordination on maritime security in the Red Sea and Gulf regions. The recent Houthi attacks on commercial shipping have only reinforced the need for this behind-the-scenes collaboration, even as public diplomacy remains frozen.

The Iranian Factor

Paradoxically, the very factor that helped drive the Abraham Accords—shared concern about Iranian regional ambitions—now threatens to undermine them. Iran’s activation of proxy forces across the region, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen, has created a multi-front crisis that makes Arab-Israeli cooperation both more necessary and more politically toxic. Gulf states find themselves caught between their strategic need to counter Iranian influence and their populations’ anger over Israeli military actions in Gaza and Lebanon.

From Warm Peace to Cold Calculation

What emerges from this complex picture is a new model of Middle Eastern diplomacy: the “cold peace.” Unlike the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, which at least maintained a facade of normalized relations despite popular opposition, the Abraham Accords are evolving into something more minimal—a framework for selective cooperation on shared interests while avoiding any pretense of broader reconciliation. This represents a significant downgrade from the initial vision of people-to-people ties, tourism, and cultural exchange that marked the Accords’ early days.

The sustainability of even this reduced framework faces serious challenges. A potential Israeli ground operation in Lebanon, further escalation with Iran, or continued humanitarian crisis in Gaza could push Gulf leaders to suspend ties entirely. Young Gulf citizens, who represent the majority of the population in these countries, show little enthusiasm for normalization, viewing it through the lens of Palestinian suffering rather than regional economic opportunity.

The Path Forward

As the Abraham Accords enter their sixth year, they stand at a critical juncture. The agreements have proven more resilient than critics predicted but far less transformative than supporters hoped. Their survival in a reduced form demonstrates both the pragmatic interests that drove them and the deep limitations of top-down peace processes that lack popular support. The question now is whether this “cold peace” model represents a sustainable new framework for Middle Eastern relations or merely a waystation toward eventual collapse.

Perhaps the most profound lesson of the Abraham Accords’ evolution is that in the Middle East, economic interests and security cooperation can create diplomatic frameworks, but they cannot overcome the fundamental grievances that drive regional conflicts. As long as the Palestinian question remains unresolved and regional proxy conflicts continue to rage, will the Accords remain forever trapped between their transformative potential and their transactional reality?