Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, gave President-elect Donald Trump credit for his efforts under the Abraham Accords during Trump’s first term to help Israel normalize relations with some of its Arab neighbors.
“President Trump did a very good thing the first time around with the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates, with Bahrain,” Blinken told Willie Geist, Jonathan Lemire, Andrea Mitchell and Mike Barnicle of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in New York on Thursday.
“Now the opportunity is there—and I know this is something that the president will be focused on—to broaden that out with the Saudis,” the secretary said. “The work that we’ve done on putting in place the elements of that deal, including what we and Saudi Arabia would do together, what they would do with Israel, all of that is now there.”
Blinken told the MSNBC hosts that his “hope is we’ll move as far as we can, but it won’t be complete. But we’ll be able to hand it over, and then the next administration can decide how it wants to proceed.”
“This would be an extraordinary success over multiple administrations to actually change the region and the future for its people,” he said.
The top U.S. diplomat also told the MSNBC hosts that “President Trump will want to get a good deal going forward” when it comes to trying to end the war in Ukraine, started by Russia in February 2022.