During his Thursday press briefing, President Trump suggested that “another country” may join the United Arab Emirates and Israel in their peace signing, while hinting that some other unnamed states were also really eager to take part. However, it was not immediately clear, whether the US president simply meant the signing event or the normalisation process in the Middle East as a whole.
“Next week at the White House, we’ll be having a signing between the UAE and Israel, and we could have another country added into that. And I will tell you that countries are lining up that want to go into it”, Trump said.
The country in question was not specified by POTUS, as he went on to say that “you’ll be hearing (about) other countries coming in over a relatively short period of time. And you could have peace in the Middle East.”
The US commander-in-chief then hinted that Saudi Arabia may eventually be among the countries to conclude a peace agreement with Tel Aviv, as he has already apparently discussed this pressing issue with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.
“I think what ultimately will happen is you're going to have quite a few countries come in. The big ones are going to be coming in. I spoke to the king of Saudi Arabia, so we're talking. We just started the dialogue. And you'll have them come in,” POTUS said in a briefing.
Earlier, Trump had already presumed that Saudi Arabia would be willing to join the UAE leadership in concluding a lasting peace accord with Israel and even said that “ultimately Iran will come in, too”.
When the Israel-Iran peace deal, dubbed the “Abraham Accord”, was announced by Donald Trump in August, Iran's leadership immediately slammed it as a “treacherous act” to the Palestinian cause and a “huge mistake”.
The UAE became the first country in the Gulf and the third in the Middle East to establish diplomatic relationship with Tel Aviv, after Egypt and Jordan did so in 1979 and 1994 respectively.
Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who is seen as a key figure in the Mid East normalisation process, said in August that it was an “inevitability” that other Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, will follow the UAE’s suit.
The peace signing event is expected to be held in the White House next Tuesday. It is not yet clear which delegations apart from the participants in question will attend the ceremony.
