The Abraham Accords have fallen off Washington and Jerusalem’s priority tables. Riyadh has frozen accession behind a Palestinian-state demand that neither capital accepts, while Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and Turkey reject the club entirely. Yet U.S. State Department briefers still shop stale Gulf tours as professional peace processors treat missing Arab signatures as the only metric that counts.
The midterm elections sit six weeks away. New recognition cannot clear that clock, but formalizing existing ties can. The Accords must preserve their initial core while evolving into a mechanism to end Israel’s post-October 7 isolation.
On Nov. 6, 2025, President Donald Trump announced Kazakhstan’s accession to the framework. Astana recognized Israel in 1992 and already supplies crude directly to Haifa and Ashkelon. Caspian and Central Asian barrels from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan covered 60% of Israel’s oil during the Gaza war, with Kazakhstan alone shipping over 5 million tons. This breakthrough bypassed the costly need for new embassies by locking critical oil, uranium, and minerals into a U.S.-led club. This realistic template works, making Azerbaijan and Cameroon strong candidates for expansion.
Azerbaijan stands as Israel’s most reliable, vital ally in the Caucasus. Baku delivered 46.4% of Israel’s crude oil in 2025 — 94,000 barrels daily through Ceyhan — even as Ankara banned official trade, while SOCAR acquired a 10% stake in the Tamar gas field. Azerbaijan’s 765-kilometer border with Iran anchors its frontline security.
During the 2026 Iran war, Israeli commandos and Mossad officers operated openly from Azerbaijani soil to strike near Tabriz. Joint intelligence operations even successfully thwarted Iranian plots targeting the Israeli embassy, a local synagogue, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. No other Shia-majority capital offers Jerusalem this indispensable combination of energy, geography, and raw intelligence. Trump capitalized on this synergy during the Aug. 8, 2025, White House summit, initiating the Armenia peace deal and the new “Trump Route.” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev maintains an embassy in Tel Aviv, preserving a direct, active channel.
This same institutional logic points directly to Yaounde. When a 1984 coup nearly toppled Paul Biya, he immediately turned to Jerusalem, where Israeli trainers rebuilt his presidential guard and formed the elite battalion locals still call the “Israeli Unit.” This alliance defied continental trends; Shimon Peres visited Yaounde in 1986 while Africa treated Israel as a pariah, and Cameroon remains one of just two African holdouts refusing to recognize a Palestinian state. Today, as progressive churches weaponize rhetoric against the Middle East’s safest nation for Christians, bringing this Christian-majority ally into the Accords delivers a definitive, strategic rebuke to that anti-Israel campaign.
To leverage these realities, the Trump administration must launch a series of rapid diplomatic initiatives ahead of the midterms. First, Washington should establish a “Kazakhstan Track” — a fast-tracked, 30-day Accords lane tailored specifically for nations that already recognize Israel. Placing Cameroon first makes flawless strategic sense. Under a newly drafted “Yaounde Protocol,” the State Department can formalize Israeli training of the presidential guard, pair Israeli irrigation with Emirati capital along a Gulf of Guinea grain corridor, and seat an Accords liaison on AFRICOM’s Boko Haram desk. Crucially, Biya can sign this package in a single stop without clearing any new diplomatic hurdles.
Second, American officials must attach a Caspian Energy Security Annex to Kazakhstan’s framework, codifying the 46.4% oil flow, the Tamar stake, and U.S. operators onto the Trump Route. To secure this, Congress should condition the next Section 907 waiver and new defense licenses on an immediate October signature from Baku.
JORDAN’S KING MUST CHOOSE: END THE FARCE OR FACE ANOTHER ‘BLACK SEPTEMBER’
Finally, the White House must stand up a “Baku Triangle Cell” of U.S., Israeli, and Azerbaijani officers to police Syria and Eastern Mediterranean incidents. By leaving a Turkish liaison seat intentionally vacant, policymakers can leverage that empty chair to pull vital Israel-Turkey talks directly into an American room.
Making membership in the Abraham Accords the price of Western legitimacy is a winning strategy. Because Kazakhstan proved the model, and only six weeks remain, Washington must get Cameroon and Azerbaijan to sign immediately.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the IDF special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a Ph.D. in Intelligence and Global Security in the Washington, D.C., area.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
