Nearly six years after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain broke with decades of Arab consensus and normalized relations with Israel, the Abraham Accords remain the operating framework for that unfinished project of Middle East realignment. The agreements have proven sturdier than many predicted, surviving two years of the Israel-Hamas war, sustained unrest in the West Bank, and open Palestinian criticism that they trade away statehood for state-to-state convenience. But as of mid-2026, the Accords are also at a familiar crossroads: expansion is being talked up loudly in Washington, while the region’s actual appetite for joining remains mixed at best.

The framework was signed in 2020 by the UAE and Bahrain, followed shortly by Morocco. Sudan added its name to a declaration of intent but never completed a full bilateral agreement, and its path has since stalled entirely amid civil war and the deal’s earlier unpopularity at home. What began as a four-country experiment in economic and security cooperation has, six years on, become something closer to a standing test of how much further Arab and Muslim-majority normalization with Israel can realistically go.

A nuclear pact as leverage

The most consequential recent development concerns Saudi Arabia. In July 2026, President Trump publicly linked any U.S.-Saudi civil nuclear cooperation agreement to the kingdom taking the step of normalizing relations with Israel — an explicit attempt to use a deal Riyadh badly wants as pressure toward one it has so far resisted. No agreement has been finalized, and Saudi officials have continued to insist, publicly, that a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood remains a precondition. Still, the linkage revived speculation that Saudi Arabia’s entry, long treated as the Accords’ ultimate prize, could be closer than it has been since talks were shelved after October 2023.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has leaned into that optimism in recent interviews, describing Israeli-Saudi peace as a personal dream and framing it as the natural next chapter of the Accords project. Whether that sentiment survives contact with Saudi domestic politics, and with a Palestinian file that Riyadh has been unwilling to simply set aside, is the open question hanging over the rest of 2026.

Kazakhstan joins, others decline

While Saudi Arabia remains unresolved, the Accords did gain a new member. Kazakhstan formally joined the grouping on November 6, 2025, a step that was largely symbolic given Kazakhstan has maintained normalized relations with Israel since the 1990s, but one the Trump administration presented as proof that its enlargement drive was still producing results. Officials and allies close to the administration have since floated a longer list of prospective signatories, including additional Central Asian states and, at various points, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Not every overture has landed. Pakistan has publicly and repeatedly ruled out joining the Accords, and Syria’s post-transition leadership has also rejected the idea, despite periodic reports of back-channel contact with Israel on security matters. Those refusals underline a pattern that has held since 2020: the countries most willing to sign tend to be those with the least direct stake in the Palestinian cause, while states with larger Muslim publics, or more contested histories with Israel, have been far more reluctant to follow.

Iran, Gaza, and the expansion logic

The administration’s push to enlarge the Accords has increasingly been folded into its broader Iran strategy. In May 2026, Trump called for multiple additional countries to sign diplomatic agreements with Israel as part of any wider settlement addressing Iran — a proposal that, according to reporting from the time, was met with more bafflement than enthusiasm across parts of the Middle East, where the logic of trading normalization for security guarantees against Tehran has never been self-evidently persuasive to publics still watching events in Gaza.

That said, the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, which took hold around October 2025, did help reopen conversations that had been effectively frozen since the war began. With large-scale fighting paused, Washington, Abu Dhabi, and Jerusalem found more room to discuss expansion without it appearing to reward or overlook ongoing violence — even as skepticism about the timing persisted among Accords critics and Palestinian officials alike.

What has actually lasted

Away from the diplomacy of who might sign next, the practical architecture built by the original Accords has proven durable. Trade between Israel and the UAE, which reached the hundreds of millions of dollars in the deal’s early years, has continued to grow, alongside intelligence and cybersecurity cooperation and a steady flow of cultural and people-to-people exchange. Technology and cybersecurity dialogues involving the United States, Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco have continued largely on schedule, insulated to a notable degree from the political turbulence surrounding the war in Gaza.

That contrast — hardy economic and security cooperation among existing signatories, paired with a much rockier road for new ones — is likely to define the Accords through the rest of 2026. Governments that have already signed continue to treat the framework pragmatically, as a useful umbrella for trade and security rather than a referendum on Palestinian statehood. Publics in several Arab countries, particularly since 2023, have taken a considerably dimmer view, and that gap between elite pragmatism and popular sentiment remains the single biggest obstacle to the kind of expansion Washington is currently promoting.

What to watch

For now, Saudi Arabia remains the pivot point. A U.S.-Saudi nuclear agreement without a normalization deal attached would suggest Riyadh has successfully decoupled the two issues Washington tried to link; a joint announcement would mark the most significant Accords expansion since 2020. Either outcome will likely shape whether the next round of prospective signatories — in Central Asia, the Caucasus, or elsewhere — sees joining as a low-risk formality or a genuine political gamble.

As always with fast-moving diplomatic signaling, readers looking for the newest bilateral announcements should track primary sources directly, including the U.S. State Department and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, alongside regional wire coverage, as positions here can shift within days.