Did the Abraham Accords Pave the Way for Total War?

Many conservatives saw the Abraham Accords as a way to get U.S. forces out of the Middle East. Now the architect of the agreement is pushing for a regime change campaign in Lebanon—and maybe Iran.

The Abraham Accords, the U.S.-sponsored alliance between Israel and several Arab states, were supposed to get the United States out of the Middle East. At least, that's what many conservative proponents argued.

In 2020, neoconservative writer Michael Doran argued in Tablet magazine that the accords were an agreement to "step up and bear more of the burden so that America can step back." Two years later, the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Affairs claimed that the accords were allowing Washington "to gradually withdraw from the Middle East to focus its efforts and resources on the Pacific Ocean, the rise of China, and the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine."

Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) has even made this strategy a large part of his foreign policy pitch. A few months before being nominated as former President Donald Trump's running mate, Vance told the antiwar Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft that "combining the Abraham Accords approach with the enduring defeat of Hamas" will ensure that "Israel, with the Sunni nations, can actually police their region of the world. That allows us to spend less time and less resources in the Middle East."

That's not how former Trump administration official Jared Kushner, a key architect of the accords, sees it. Over the weekend, he posted an essay to social media arguing that the United States should build on the "Abraham Accords breakthrough" by backing an Israeli war in Lebanon, and hinted that the time is ripe for a wider U.S. war. "Iran is now fully exposed," he wrote, adding that "it's not only Israel's fight."

Of course, the Trump administration has never pretended that the Abraham Accords were meant to allow U.S. disengagement; then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo bragged about unlocking more "defense cooperation." The Biden administration itself promised a permanent U.S. military commitment to Abraham Accords member Bahrain in order to entice Saudi Arabia to join the alliance.

But Kushner's essay moves the goalposts from a defensive commitment to an offensive one. It's now hard to pretend that the vision is anything less than a regime change campaign on the scale that old-fashioned neoconservatives could only dream of.

Kushner wrote his essay in response to the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah commander Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, had been engaged in a low-grade border war with Israel for the past year. Israel decided to assassinate Nasrallah after he kept demanding an end to the Israeli war in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire in Lebanon, an Israeli official told NBC.

The Israeli army is now beginning a ground incursion into Lebanon, after the Biden administration reportedly talked Israel out of a full-on ground invasion. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at even larger plans, calling Nasrallah's assassination "Operation New Order" and stating that the fall of the Iranian government "will come a lot sooner than people think."

Nasrallah's assassination "is significant because Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel," Kushner wrote. "The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It's long overdue. And it's not only Israel's fight," he added.

Kushner added that Iran is the "main issue between Lebanon and Israel" and brought up Hezbollah's role in killing U.S. Marines in 1983, during the last U.S. military intervention in Lebanon.

That incident, of course, demonstrates exactly why Kushner's vision might not go as planned. In 1982, before Hezbollah existed, Israel invaded Lebanon to root out Palestinian guerrillas. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon envisioned an operation aimed at "transforming Lebanon into a reliable ally," assassinating Palestinian leadership, expelling Palestinians, and eventually overthrowing the government of Jordan, according to Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman.

After Israeli forces stormed Beirut, the Lebanese capital, they successfully installed their ally, Bachir Gemayel, as prime minister and forced the Palestine Liberation Organization to withdraw from the country. (U.S. Marines were sent to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal.) But Gemayel was assassinated by one of his own countrymen, and a new militia called Hezbollah emerged to fight both the Israeli and U.S. presence.

Kushner's reference to Iranian nuclear sites points to another, greater danger. As of this spring, the U.S. government believes that Iran could build a nuclear bomb within several months but has not yet made the decision to do so. The Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and the hints that more is coming have almost certainly changed Iran's calculations.

It's a given that any military campaign against the Iranian nuclear program would require direct U.S. involvement, since Israel could not do it alone, as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and retired Israeli military analyst Danny Citrinowicz point out. Iranian nuclear facilities are hardened and scattered throughout the country; only the United States has enough aircraft, air bases within range, and bunker-busting bombs to hit all of these sites.

The U.S. president may very soon face a choice between allowing Iran to build a nuclear bomb or bombing Iran, a prospect that suits Kushner, Pompeo, and Netanyahu well. The question for Trump and Vance is whether they support this vision, too.