Several Trump administration officials have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for helping negotiate normalization deals between Israel and Arab nations.
Attorney Alan Dershowitz nominated former White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, his deputy, Avi Berkowitz, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.
“These accords, which have brought about normalization between Israel and several Sunni Arab nations, fulfill all the criteria for the prize,” Dershowitz wrote in his nomination letter, as cited by the “Jerusalem Post.” “They hold the promise of an even broader peace in the Middle East between Israel, the Palestinians and other Arab nations. They are a giant step forward in bringing peace and stability to the region, and even to the world.”
The normalization deals were announced in a four-month span between mid-August and mid-December of last year and were lauded by many as the most significant diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East in 25 years as the region girds for a prolonged confrontation with Iran.
Iran tensions remain high, with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying in a speech at the National Press Club in mid-January that the al-Qaeda terrorist group has a new headquarters there. The Biden administration has indicated it is ready to end the isolation of Iran put in place by the Trump administration over that country’s nuclear arms ambitions.
“Al-Qaeda has a new home base, it is the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said. “As a result, [Osama] bin Laden’s wicked creation is poised to gain strength and capabilities. We ignore this Iran-al-Qaeda nexus at our own peril. We need to acknowledge it, we must confront it. Indeed, we must defeat it. This axis poses a grave threat to the security of nations and to the American homeland itself.”
The Abraham Accords have been hailed as enabling a more responsive strategic posture with respect to the threat posed by Iran.
“The recent Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain both reflect and augur a growing strategic alignment between Israel and key American partners in the Middle East, driven primarily by the worsening Iranian nuclear and regional threats,” the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a pro-Israel think tank based in Washington, said in a statement.
The Trump administration secured twice as many peace agreements between nations than any other American president. The former president himself was nominated numerous times for the peace prize.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice