The End of The Abrahamic Accords?

By Avi Drori, Senior Contributor

April 8, 2026

The two-week ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, brokered not by American diplomacy but by Pakistan's Shehbaz Sharif, marks a turning point far more consequential than any battlefield outcome. Regardless of how it is branded — "total and complete victory," as President Trump insists — what happened on April 7, 2026 is a de facto American defeat, and every capital from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi knows it.

Consider the facts. Iran's 10-point proposal, which Trump called "not good enough" just 24 hours earlier, suddenly became "a workable basis on which to negotiate." That proposal demands the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from regional bases, the lifting of all sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian assets, reparations, and Iran's right to nuclear enrichment. Tehran is dictating terms. Washington is listening. The Strait of Hormuz — through which a fifth of global oil flows — will reopen not under free navigation, but "via coordination with Iran's Armed Forces." Iran now holds the tollbooth to the world economy.

For the Gulf Cooperation Council states, this ceasefire is an earthquake. The entire architecture of Gulf security since 1991 rested on a single premise: that the United States would deter and, if necessary, confront Iran on their behalf. The Abrahamic Accords of 2020 extended that logic — normalization with Israel was, at its core, a security arrangement underwritten by American power. Saudi Arabia's potential accession was to transform the Accords into a de facto Middle Eastern NATO, a multilateral shield against Iranian expansionism.

When Iranian missiles struck Gulf states and the American response was to accept a Pakistani-mediated pause, the message was unmistakable: Washington will not sustain a fight for the Gulf. The $120 billion in war-related damages suffered by Arab states, the disrupted oil shipments, the collapsed tourism — all of this pain was absorbed while America negotiated its own exit.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are pragmatic actors. They will read the ceasefire correctly: the U.S. is an unreliable guarantor. The gravitational pull of BRICS — where China and Russia offer security partnerships without democratic preconditions — will intensify. Beijing reportedly helped push Tehran toward the ceasefire. That is not altruism; it is positioning. China wants the Gulf's energy and investment flows routed through its own architecture, not Washington's.

The cruel irony is that the Abrahamic Accords were designed to prevent precisely this scenario — a Middle East where Iran sets the terms and America retreats. Instead, the war has accelerated it. Saudi Arabia will not join an alliance whose senior partner folds under pressure. It will hedge. It will diversify. It will talk to Tehran.

The ceasefire may hold but the American hegemony in the Gulf is over, and empty declarations cannot resurrect it.