President Donald Trump told Arab leaders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt during a Saturday conference call that he would only broker a peace deal with Iran, including reopening the vital Strait of Hormuz, if they agreed to normalize relations with Israel. The response, as reported by the Daily Mail, was dead air. The leaders said nothing.
The silence stretched long enough that Trump himself broke it. "Are they still there?" he asked, according to details of the leaked call first attributed to Axios.
Then he moved on. Trump told the Arab leaders that his envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, would follow up on Israel normalization in the weeks ahead. The call ended. The message was plain: Washington would not hand Tehran a lifeline without extracting something from the broader region in return.
The Saturday call set the terms of a diplomatic gambit that has only grown more complicated since. By Monday, peace talks between the United States and Iran had stalled. Both sides hit an impasse over Tehran's uranium stockpile and the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets.
Iran's Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Doha on Monday for continued negotiations. Under the framework being discussed, Iran would commit to opening the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days of a finalized deal, according to a diplomatic source cited by Nikkei. But Tehran has insisted the deal includes no immediate concessions on its nuclear program, only a commitment to discuss the issue during a separate 60-day window.
That distinction matters. Trump has made clear he views any agreement that leaves Iran's nuclear ambitions unchecked as unacceptable. On Truth Social Monday, he drew the line explicitly.
"It will be the exact opposite of the JCPOA disaster negotiated by the failed Obama Administration, which was a direct and open path to a Nuclear Weapon for Iran."
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, negotiated under President Obama, was the deal Trump pulled the United States out of during his first term, calling it "the worst deal in history." His insistence now on a fundamentally different structure, one that ties economic relief to real security concessions, reflects a consistent posture. Whether Iran will accept those terms is another question entirely.
What makes the Saturday call significant is not just the Iran angle. It is the linkage Trump imposed between the Iran deal and the Abraham Accords, his signature 2020 diplomatic achievement that normalized relations between Israel and four nations: the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.
Expanding those accords to include heavyweights like Saudi Arabia has been a stated goal of Trump's Middle East policy. But the Gaza war has made that harder. Israel's standing among Arab nations has dropped sharply in the wake of a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, and the political appetite in Riyadh, Cairo, and Ankara for public embrace of Jerusalem is thin.
Trump's move on Saturday was to force the issue, to make normalization with Israel the price of American mediation with Iran. It was not a gentle ask. And the silence on the other end of the line suggested the Arab leaders understood exactly what was being demanded.
On Sunday, Trump struck a warmer tone on Truth Social, thanking Middle Eastern countries for their cooperation.
"I would like to thank, thus far, all of the countries of the Middle East for their support and cooperation, which will be further enhanced and strengthened by their joining the Nations of the historic Abraham Accords."
He even floated a provocation: "Who knows, perhaps the Islamic Republic of Iran would like to join, as well!"
The backdrop to these negotiations is not abstract. On February 28, a missile struck central Tel Aviv. On March 11, an Iranian strike caused an oil tanker fire at the Khor al-Zubair port near Basra, Iraq. Israel struck Iran's Shahran oil depot in Tehran. The cycle of escalation has been real, and the recent U.S. retaliatory strikes on Iran underscored how close the two nations came to broader conflict.
Trump has framed the current diplomatic window as a product of strength. He described the U.S. relationship with Iran as "becoming a much more professional and productive one" and urged Tehran to "understand" that it could not develop a nuclear weapon or bomb. On Truth Social, he announced that the Iranian peace agreement was "largely negotiated" but still "subject to finalization," adding that "the Strait of Hormuz will be opened."
He also posted a meme depicting himself forcing a cartoon figure representing Iran to negotiate, captioned with a threat that he "will blow s*** up." The imagery was blunt. The diplomatic language was only slightly less so.
The vow that the U.S. and Iran would reach "a great and meaningful" agreement or "there will be no deal" left little room for ambiguity. This was not the Obama-era posture of extending olive branches and hoping for reciprocity. It was conditionality backed by demonstrated willingness to act, a posture that Trump formalized when he notified Congress that hostilities with Iran had ended, even as the broader standoff continued.
The Strait of Hormuz is not a minor detail in these negotiations. It is the world's most important oil chokepoint, and Iran's ability to threaten it has been a source of leverage for decades. The prospect of a deal that reopens the strait sent global benchmark Brent crude falling to $97 per barrel on Monday, its lowest price in more than a month.
That drop tells you what the markets think about the stakes. A stable, open Strait of Hormuz means lower energy costs for American consumers and reduced geopolitical risk for global shipping. It also means Iran loses one of its most potent bargaining chips.
Trump's willingness to tie that outcome to Arab-Israeli normalization is a bet that the economic incentives are strong enough to overcome the political resistance. Saudi Arabia, in particular, has deep reasons to want stability in the Gulf. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appeared alongside Trump at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center on November 19, an event that also drew Elon Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The economic relationship between Washington and Riyadh is deepening. Whether it deepens enough to overcome Riyadh's reluctance on Israel remains the open question.
UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed has already told Trump he supports the deal to end the war, a notable statement from the first Arab signatory to the Abraham Accords. But the UAE signed those accords in 2020, before Gaza. The political landscape has shifted.
The Arab leaders' silence on the Saturday call is open to interpretation. It could reflect genuine shock at the conditionality. It could reflect a calculated decision not to commit on a live call that might leak, which, of course, it did. It could reflect the simple reality that normalizing with Israel right now carries enormous domestic political risk in every capital that was on the line.
What it does not reflect is enthusiasm. And Trump, to his credit, did not pretend otherwise. He cracked a joke, moved forward, and dispatched Kushner and Witkoff to do the follow-up work. The threats against Iran have been real, the IRGC's own provocations, including an alleged plot to assassinate Ivanka Trump, have given the administration ample justification for a hard line.
Meanwhile, the Iran deal itself remains in limbo. Trump described it as "largely negotiated" but acknowledged it is "subject to finalization." The sticking points, uranium stockpile, frozen assets, nuclear timeline, are not small. Iran's insistence on deferring the nuclear question to a later phase is precisely the kind of structure that produced the JCPOA's failures. Whether this administration accepts that framework or demands more remains to be seen.
The core logic of Trump's approach is straightforward: use the Iran deal as leverage to expand the Abraham Accords, and use the Abraham Accords as leverage to reshape the Middle East. It is ambitious. It is transactional. And it depends on parties who have every reason to resist.
But the alternative, brokering an Iran deal that gives Tehran economic relief without extracting broader regional concessions, would repeat the pattern of the Obama years. Trump clearly has no interest in that outcome. The Arab leaders may not have liked what they heard on Saturday. But they heard it clearly.
Silence, in diplomacy, is not the same as refusal. But it is a long way from yes. And the clock is ticking, for Iran, for the Strait, and for the leaders who now have to decide what peace is worth.