Abraham Accords, the US-brokered peace agreements that once seemed like a quietly closing chapter in Middle East history, have roared back to the front pages. US President Donald Trump stunned leaders across the Muslim world on Monday when he publicly “mandatorily requested” that six nations including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan sign the accords as a precondition to any final nuclear settlement with Iran. For India, this moment is both an opening and a test.
Abraham Accords Are Trump’s Whole Strategy
Let’s begin with what Trump actually said, because language matters.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social on Monday morning, the US president wrote that he had spoken with leaders of eight Muslim-majority and Middle Eastern nations on Saturday. During that conversation, he told them plainly that after all the American effort put into stitching together a deal with Iran, it should be a given that every country at the table simultaneously commits to the Abraham Accords. He named Saudi Arabia and Qatar to go first. He said those who refuse should not expect to be part of the deal at all.
He even floated the idea of Iran itself eventually joining. “It would be an honor to have them also be part of this unparalleled World Coalition,” he wrote.
According to Axios, the leaders on that Saturday call were not prepared for this demand. When Trump made his pitch, the line reportedly went completely quiet. Trump, being Trump, broke the silence himself. He asked if anyone was still there.
That silence tells you everything about how sudden and far-reaching this push is. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have spent years holding back from formally recognising Israel, citing the unresolved Palestinian question as their reason. Trump, in one social media post, essentially told them that the window of patience is now closed.
What Are the Abraham Accords?
In September 2020, during Trump’s first term, the United States brokered a series of normalisation agreements between Israel and a group of Arab nations. The UAE and Bahrain were first. Morocco and Sudan followed. These countries agreed to formally recognise Israel, open embassies, and build economic and security ties. The deals were called the Abraham Accords, named after the patriarch revered across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a shared ancestor.
Before these deals, the Arab world’s official position had long been that recognising Israel was off the table until Palestinians received a state of their own. The accords broke that consensus wide open. They were controversial, especially among Palestinians and countries that saw them as a betrayal of a decades-old promise. But they were also undeniably consequential.
Israel-UAE trade, which was virtually zero before 2020, climbed to billions of dollars annually within just three years. New business partnerships, technology exchanges, and defence collaborations followed at a pace nobody had predicted.
Why Does Any of This Concern India?
Before the Abraham Accords, India’s West Asia policy was like walking a very particular kind of tightrope. New Delhi had warm ties with Israel, significant economic partnerships with Arab Gulf nations, and a longstanding friendship with Iran. The problem was that Israel and the Arab states were at odds with each other.
India had to be careful never to appear too cosy with Jerusalem when dealing with Riyadh or Abu Dhabi. Every upgrade in India-Israel defence cooperation had to come with careful messaging to reassure Arab partners. It was exhausting diplomacy, and it had real limits. The accords changed the geometry entirely.
But the Abraham Accords, by creating direct lines of cooperation between Israel and Arab nations, effectively dissolved the need for this approach. When the UAE and Israel are doing business together, India does not need to apologise to Abu Dhabi for buying weapons from Tel Aviv. When Bahrain and Israel share security frameworks, India’s long-running defence relationship with Israel becomes less politically sensitive in Gulf capitals.
This is what analysts mean when they talk about India’s shift toward multi-alignment in West Asia. It is not neutrality, which is passive. It is active engagement with all sides at once, which the accords finally made structurally possible.
But There Is a Problem India Cannot Wish Away: Iran
India and Iran have centuries of civilisational overlap. More recently and more practically, India has sunk significant investment into the Chabahar Port on Iran’s southern coast. Chabahar is India’s answer to Pakistan’s refusal to let Indian goods cross its territory. Through Chabahar, India can reach Afghanistan and from there connect to Central Asia’s markets. It is a strategic necessity, not a diplomatic luxury.
Iran is also one of India’s suppliers of crude oil, though the relationship has been complicated by American sanctions in recent years.
As the conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel escalated in recent months, India found itself in an uncomfortable position. India has an observer status at the US Central Command and has a representative posted at its naval wing in Bahrain. Indian Navy activities are coordinated with Centcom partners. That closeness to the American security umbrella did not go unnoticed in Tehran.
Trump’s demand that countries involved in the Iran deal must also sign the Abraham Accords makes this tension sharper. If the deal goes through and a newly normalised regional bloc takes shape around the accords framework, India will need to navigate the Iran relationship with considerable finesse.
Preserving Chabahar access, maintaining at least a working diplomatic relationship with Tehran, and not being seen as having abandoned a long-standing partner is a genuinely difficult three-way balancing act.
India’s Biggest Win: A New Grouping Called I2U2
When the UAE and Israel began working together openly after 2020, something remarkable became possible. India, which had deep bilateral ties with both countries as well as with the United States, could now sit at a table with all three simultaneously without anyone raising an eyebrow.
That table became real in October 2021, when the I2U2 grouping was formally established.
What is I2U2?
The name stands for India, Israel, UAE, and the United States. Some have called it the West Asian Quad, though it is quite different in character from the Indo-Pacific Quad. Where the Indo-Pacific Quad is partly about countering China’s influence in the ocean, I2U2 is explicitly about building things: food security projects, clean energy infrastructure, technology transfers, and supply chain innovation.
The first leaders’ summit of I2U2 was held in July 2022. One of the headline outcomes was a proposal to build integrated food parks in India, combining India’s agricultural scale, Israeli water and crop technology, and UAE funding. It is a genuinely practical model of what regional cooperation can look like when countries stop treating each other as adversaries.
For India’s foreign policy, the significance of I2U2 goes beyond any single project. It marks a shift in how New Delhi is perceived in that part of the world. India went from being a country that carefully managed bilateral relationships in silos to one that now anchors a multilateral grouping shaping the economic and technological agenda of West Asia.
That is not a small thing.
What is IMEEC and What it did to supply chain maps?
Announced at the G20 summit hosted by India in New Delhi in September 2023, IMEEC envisions a network of shipping lanes and rail connections linking India’s western coast to the Arabian Gulf, and from there through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel into Europe. It would give Indian goods a faster, more predictable route to European markets than the current options offer.
The Abraham Accords made this corridor politically conceivable. Countries that did not recognise each other’s existence simply could not build shared rail infrastructure. The normalisation that began in 2020 opened that door.
Now, if Trump’s current push succeeds and Saudi Arabia formally joins the accords framework, IMEEC gains another critical node. Saudi territory is geographically central to the corridor. Saudi participation would not just add another signatory to a diplomatic agreement. It would fill in a missing piece of the actual physical route.
Where Does This Leave India?
The honest answer is that India is in a position of considerable advantage, provided it plays its cards with care.
The Abraham Accords framework has already delivered structural benefits to India: the I2U2 platform, the IMEEC corridor concept, the freedom to engage Israel and Arab states simultaneously. If Trump’s current push succeeds and Saudi Arabia and Qatar formally join, the framework becomes even more comprehensive. Saudi participation alone would be a seismic development, given Riyadh’s symbolic importance in the Arab and Islamic world.
India should be pressing to deepen its role in IMEEC negotiations. It should be ensuring that the I2U2 agenda continues to produce concrete, deliverable projects in food security and clean energy. And it should, simultaneously, be quietly reinforcing its message to Tehran that India’s participation in these frameworks is economic and not directed against Iran.
That last part is probably the most difficult. But it is also the most important. A West Asia where India has to permanently choose between its Arab-Israeli partnerships and its Iran relationship is a West Asia where Indian foreign policy is permanently constrained.
The Abraham Accords showed that seemingly impossible diplomatic separations can be bridged. Whether Indian diplomacy can pull off something similar on its Iran challenge is the real question for the months ahead.