Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) touted President Donald Trump’s proposal requiring expansion of the Abraham Accords as part of a negotiated settlement to the Iran conflict, calling the idea "simply brilliant."
Graham said it would result in the most significant change in the Middle East in thousands of years.
The Abraham Accords is a set of agreements established in 2020 under the first Trump administration, aimed at normalizing relations between several Arab nations and Israel.
Graham offered his perspective after Trump shared in a Memorial Day social media post that it should be “mandatory” for certain countries in the region to join the Abraham Accords as part of U.S. efforts to reach a deal with Iran.
Trump explicitly named Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, and Pakistan in his proposal. The countries, with Pakistan taking the lead, have in some way helped facilitate mediation efforts between Washington and Tehran.
The president said he spoke on Saturday to leaders of those countries, as well as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which already have signed the accords.
Trump also said those nations eventually would be honored to have Iran as part of the regional coalition once a peace deal to end the war is reached.
Democrats have not issued a formal response to Trump's proposal, but many have historically supported the Abraham Accords because they normalize relations between Israel and Arab states.
Foreign-policy experts, however, have argued that expanding the accords without addressing Palestinian statehood or the Gaza war is unrealistic. At the same time, critics have also claimed that Trump is trying to lump too many goals together all at once—an Iran agreement, a regional peace framework, and mass normalization with Israel—in a manner that does not align with the political realities in the Middle East.