WASHINGTON — Steve Witkoff, the senior adviser and assistant to President Donald Trump who is helping lead major peace negotiations worldwide, told Breitbart News exclusively last week at the White House that he believes there is “big energy” for what he expects will be a likely expansion of the Abraham Accords in a matter of months not years.
Witkoff’s comments came as the last major part of his exclusive on-camera sit-down interview with Breitbart News and just before Trump’s visit to the Middle East this week. Trump is in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar this week. He is meeting with a number of Arab world leaders, including Syria’s new leader, while there. Witkoff is accompanying Trump on the trip, and met with the Iranians this weekend in Oman for a fourth round of talks with them on denuclearization. Witkoff may break off from the trip to go oversee peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey later this week, and Trump himself has even said he might make a surprise visit there to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Previously published pieces from this Witkoff exclusive focused on each of those major conflicts as well as Witkoff pushing back on critics. This final piece focuses on Trump’s efforts to expand his landmark diplomatic achievement from his first term, where Trump had for the first time in decades succeeded in getting a number of Arab nations to formally normalize relations with Israel. That deal, the Abraham Accords, has remained stalled since Trump’s first term in the White House as during Democrat Joe Biden’s failed presidency no new countries joined the accords. But now, with Trump back in the driver’s seat, Witkoff said the “big energy” is back as well and there may be more joining very soon.
“There’s big energy,” Witkoff said. “You bring up a really good point. Everyone is focused on these ‘big boy deals,’ Iran and Russia-Ukraine and Gaza but along the way we’re making inroads, real inroads, on bringing countries into the Abraham Peace Accords.”
Witkoff shockingly predicted that nations like Lebanon—where the terror group Hezbollah operates from—and Syria, which had an Islamist leader just topple the now former government of dictator Bashar al-Assad, may join up with Israel into the Abraham Accords soon. He also mentioned Libya as a possible partner, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“My prediction is that sometime relatively soon we’re going to see the potential for Lebanon and even Syria to normalize,” Witkoff said. “There have been strong positive reactions from them. It could happen with Libya. It could happen, and I’m talking about getting countries into the Abraham Peace Accords, it could happen with Azerbaijan and Armenia where we believe we’re very, very close to a settlement—a final settlement—of the conflicts in those countries. Both, I believe, might be willing to join the Abraham Peace Accords. So that’s a huge initiative for the president. He believes in it. It promotes peace and stability generally in the region. We are out there, and I have a very, very good team. We work with the State Department very, very well which allows to take talent from there as needed in some of these conversations that we’re having. I’m really confident we’re going to have four or five, maybe six, countries enter the Abraham Peace Accords in the next couple of months and that will be a big signal to the world about President Trump’s foreign policy initiatives to promote peace and stability in the world.”
The big remaining possible Abraham Accords entrant is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The major Gulf power has balked previous attempts to get them to join, and Trump’s trip to the nation now has yet to unlock such a deal. But Witkoff confirmed the talks remain ongoing with the Saudis, and also that this peace vision from Trump fits together with a larger worldview for putting the United States in a better position particularly against the Chinese Communist Party. One big offensive play that Trump has spoken highly of that would create a trade corridor from India through the Middle East into Europe then over to the U.S. is called the IMEEC corridor, or India-Middle East-Europe-Economic-Corridor. That agreement has both the Saudis and the Israelis in it, so for Trump to truly unlock the counter measure to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative getting to a place where relations are normalized between Israel and Saudi Arabia is critically important.
“You are so right. It’s all totally connected and correlated,” Witkoff said. “If the Saudis enter in the Abraham Peace Accords and normalization—I think it’s something that they want, it’s something that they contemplate—I think Gaza has to be solved in some sort of way for them to completely normalize and I think Gaza will be solved in some sort of way in the very, very near future so that hopefully will allow them a pathway. But whenever that occurs—normalization with Israel—the Saudis are a really strong ally of ours. We do business with them. We have a really strong strategic arrangement with them and we stand behind them defensively. We have an existing agreement with them. The talks are very, very friendly. They are a critical—critical—ally for us. This is what the president’s policy is all about. He is reaching out to all the countries in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]. I know that one of the reasons we have this trip is because he believes in the, I’ll use the word apotheosis, of the GCC—where it’s going and how relevant it is in the world today. I admire it and I think it’s a really important initiative that we’re undertaking here in this administration.”
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