Trump administration goes big with UAE-Israel peace deal

Week in Review

A man reads a copy of the United Arab Emirates-based The National newspaper near the Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure and building in the world since 2009, in the Gulf emirate of Dubai on Aug. 14, 2020, as the publication's headline reflects the previous day's news that Israel and the UAE had agreed to normalize relations in a landmark US-brokered deal. — GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images

You can’t undersell the UAE-Israel deal

US President Donald Trump said the UAE-Israel deal was "huge,” and he nailed it.

The agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is indeed a diplomatic breakthrough and credit rightly goes to Trump and his team.

All that comes next will flow through Washington and the White House. King Abdullah of Jordan can exhale, as annexation is off the agenda, the condition of Abu Dhabi’s signing up. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a bystander on Israeli-Arab matters, chimed in that he might suspend Turkey’s ties with the UAE in solidarity with the Palestinians (Pinar Tremblay has the background here on the Turkey-UAE "cold war"). Iran, which has had a warming trend in ties with UAE, slammed the move as "stupid."

Trump administration goes big with UAE-Israel peace deal

Other Gulf states may follow.

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