- Ponmala
To symbolise the hope for reconciliation and the shared heritage of the patriarch Abraham, revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco signed the Abraham Accords, a series of joint agreements that normalised diplomatic, economic and security relations between Israel and these Arab nations. The agreements were brokered by the United States during Donald Trump’s first term as president. Kazakhstan joined the group in 2025. The accords marked a historic shift in Middle Eastern diplomacy, bypassing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to foster regional cooperation. The attack launched by Hamas on Israel on 7 October 2023 was apparently triggered by moves made by the United States to rope in Saudi Arabia into normalising relationship with Israel… That ultimately led to the current all-out war between Israel-US combine and Iran. The Arab states that signed the accords are now taking the beating from Iran on behalf of the United States, whose military’s protection they rely on.
The age-old discord among Abraham’s descendants, will not end as long as Iran refuses to accept Israel as a sovereign nation and Israel refuses to accept Palestine as a sovereign nation. Israel sees a nuclear-armed Iran that possesses long-range missiles as an existential threat, as do Western nations. Iran, on the other hand, believes that it needs them as deterrence against the military might of nuclear-armed Israel. After two years of laborious negotiations, Obama succeeded in hammering out a feasible nuclear deal that would prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb. But it was unacceptable to Israel’s PM, Netanyahu. As luck would have it for him, Donald Trump, who toed his line, surprisingly became America’s President and promptly withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal, opening the way for Iran to enrich uranium to a level that took them to the verge of possessing nuclear weapons.
In his second term as president of the United States, Trump took up the containment of Iran’s nuclear and missile development programmes as a top priority. Iran showed willingness to negotiate. As the negotiation was in progress, Israel struck Iran’s nuclear sites on 13 June 2025. The US military bombed Iranian nuclear facilities later that month, resulting in a 12-day war. Soon, serious negotiations for a nuclear deal restarted. Just as word got around that a deal was all but concluded, Israel and the US bombed sites and cities all across Iran and eliminated the top brass of Iran’s military and government, including its supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Iran retaliated by attacking Israel and US bases in the Gulf countries and blocking the Strait of Hormuz for maritime traffic. Under the mediation of Pakistan, the warring parties have now agreed to a two-week ceasefire. Talks for finding a permanent solution to the conflict will have to be found within that period, failing which Trump vows to annihilate Iran and send it back to the Stone Age.
What makes Israel and America and their Middle Eastern and Western allies live in the mortal fear of a theocratic Iran is that it would take recourse to nuclear terrorism to create havoc for those whom they perceive as enemies of Shiite Islam. But why should they when they together already possess enough and more nuclear arsenal to turn Iran into one huge fireball? The Jihadi fervour of theocratic Iran is the crux of the problem. Didn’t they form human chains across bridges and in front of power plants across the country when Trump threatened to destroy them? Trump and Netanyahu want to defang Iran and render it to harmless by forcing it to abandon nuclear enrichment and the development and manufacture of missiles and military grade drones. Iran will never agree to that. Now that Iran has established control over the strait of Hormuz, it will in all probability refuse to forego it.
The only choice left for Trump then would be to destroy the Kharg Island, which handles nearly 90% of Iran’s crude exports. That will raise the price of petroleum immensely, including in America. To establish control over the Strait of Hormuz and turn it back into international waters, America will have to put boots on the ground there. While the Iranians are willing to die for their country in any number, the Americans no more want to get their soldiers killed fighting in foreign lands. That makes all the difference. In the end, the resilience and Jihadi fervour of the Iranians will come out victorious. As for annihilating a civilization and sending it back to the Stone Age that has culturally happened to America at the very moment Trump pronounced that threat.
Discord and deceit have very much been an Abrahamic legacy. Isaac’s younger son Jacob blackmails his dead hungry elder brother Esau into selling him his rights as the first-born son in return for some soup. Again, with the connivance of his mother, Rebecca, Jacob tricks blind Isaac into giving him the blessing that by right belonged to his elder brother, Esau… But the feud ended in a dramatic reconciliation, which is described in the Bible thus: “Jacob… bowed down to the ground seven times as he approached his brother. But Esau ran to meet, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. They were both crying.” If only the common ancestry shared by Jews, Christians and Muslims through Abraham brought about a similar reconciliation!
