The Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, announced on Friday that it acquired the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, which will be folded into Heritage’s operations.
The non-profit institute was founded by Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a key senior adviser in Trump’s first term.
An architect of the Accords normalization agreements between Israel and several majority-Muslim countries, Kushner stated, “I’m grateful for the excellent work the Abraham Accords Peace Institute performed to nurture and strengthen the Accords during a period when they were new and most vulnerable.”
“I am very excited to see what the team will accomplish at its new home,” he said.
The institute was created to support the implementation of the Accords and to help expand them to other countries. It has focused on the economic progress and opportunities that the pacts afforded.
The Heritage Foundation—under which Project 2025, the blueprint for governance created for Trump’s second term, was created—is a significant player in Republican policymaking.
The effort to fold the institute into Heritage could set the stage for a push for Israeli-Arab normalization to become a more central focus of Trump’s Middle East policy, which was defined in his first term by the success of the Accords, signed in 2020 by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and the United States.
Aryeh Lightstone, the institute’s CEO, previously served as a senior adviser to David Friedman when the latter was U.S. ambassador to Israel. Lightstone is set to join the second Trump administration in a role supporting Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East.
“During the last four years, the Abraham Accords Peace Institute has successfully carried out its mission of solidifying and strengthening the Abraham Accords and setting the stage for its further expansion,” Lightstone stated.
“The early days of that effort—when these relationships were nascent and the Biden administration refused to recognize their significance or even call the Accords by their given name—were the most challenging,” he said. “Our team executed well and helped weave the Accords into the fabric of the Middle East, where the agreements have endured even amid regional conflict.”
The current institute leaders, Asher Fredman and David Aaronson, who operate out of its Israel bureau, will join Heritage as visiting fellows. Robert Greenway, director of the Allison Center for National Security at Heritage, will chair the initiative.
“Since the signing of the Accords in 2020, AAPI has connected people and organizations between the Abraham Accords countries and tracked its progress while identifying opportunities and challenges,” stated Greenway, a former national security and intelligence official. “It is a privilege to continue its vital work.”
A strategy recently unveiled by the Heritage Foundation called for gradually ending U.S. military aid to Israel over the next 23 years as part of what Heritage described as a reorientation of the bilateral relationship.
A leak of the report led to the cancellation of a planned event with Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, and Victoria Coates, a former Trump deputy national security advisor and current vice president at Heritage. (Coates stated last month that press coverage on the leaked report mischaracterized it and that the report “advocates for the transition from foreign military financing to foreign military sales by 2048.”)
“It is an honor for Heritage to carry on Jared’s trailblazing work to bring security and prosperity to the Middle East through the integration of Israel with America’s regional partners and allies,” Coates wrote of the acquisition. “Rob and I look forward to continued close collaboration with his team as we pursue new opportunities to support peace initiatives in the Middle East and beyond.”