India, June 3 -- US President Donald Trump's late-May 2026 demand that virtually every Arab and Islamic State "mandatorily" join the Abraham Accords - and do so as a near-precondition for any settlement with Iran - tells us more about Washington's politics than about any pathway to stability in West Asia. In one stroke, normalisation with Israel was recast from a voluntary incentive into a coercive condition, and the bilateral 2020 agreements transformed into a collective litmus test of alignment with Washington and Jerusalem. The region's answer has been an unambiguous "no".

The proposal contained a basic factual error. Half the countries Trump named - Egypt, Jordan, Turkey - already have diplomatic relations with Israel, established de...