Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo, in an interview with National Review during one of the final stops of his extended, post-election foreign trip, voiced confidence that “many countries” in the Middle East will make the decision to normalize ties with Israel in the near future.
“I’m very confident that they’ll make this [choice] . . . in the coming weeks and months ahead,” Pompeo said.
He made the prediction Sunday on the sidelines of his stop in Abu Dhabi, where he met a day earlier with Emirati crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the first Arab leader to sign one of the recent normalization agreements, which span tourism, trade, and culture, in addition to full diplomatic relations. Bahrain and Sudan joined the agreements, called the Abraham Accords, soon thereafter.
Already, the wheels of the administration’s Mideast project are turning again. Later on Sunday, Pompeo traveled to the Saudi Arabian city of Neom, where he met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A State Department readout did not indicate that they discussed the recent normalization agreements, but according to the Wall Street Journal, citing Hebrew-language media reports and original reporting, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined them.
“I’m confident there’ll be more nations that will follow,” Pompeo told NR hours earlier, during the sit-down interview in the Emirati capital. “The reason I’m confident, by the way, is because it’s the right thing for those countries to do.”
Pompeo’s ten-day trip unfolded to the backdrop of domestic political turmoil and effectively served as a Trump administration farewell tour and foreign-policy victory lap. Visits to Middle Eastern countries highlighted what officials regard as one of the crowning diplomatic achievements of the past four years.
In his NR interview, Pompeo spoke to the strategic sea change that the administration contends made all this possible.
According to the secretary of state, it took the widespread acknowledgement of three factors to reach the Abraham Accords. In addition to acknowledgement of the central threat posed by Iran and Israel’s established place in the region, he said, it also required recognizing that while resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is important, “we can’t stand by as we have for 40 years and allow that conflict to be the precondition for further enhancement of peace and stability.”
Pompeo summed up: “We broke glass. We said we’re not going to do that.”…
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