Pompeo hopes Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords

Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said “many” people in Saudi Arabia want normalized relations with Israel, voicing hope the Kingdom will join the Abraham Accords agreed during Donald Trump’s administration, AFP reported.

Pompeo, who served as Trump’s CIA director and top diplomat, made the comments in a recorded video address to the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, which will give him its inaugural Global Leadership Award on Monday.

Under the Abraham Accords brokered by Trump last year, four majority Arab states — UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — agreed to establish ties with Israel.

“Predicting the future has proven a struggle for me,” Pompeo said in remarks shared with AFP, adding that he thinks “many more” countries will seek ties with Israel.

“I hope that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can find its way to join the Abraham Accords. I know that many inside that country want that to take place,” he said.

Pompeo further claimed the Abraham Accords were made possible by the US killing of powerful Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike, arguing it built trust between Washington and its Arab allies.

“When leaders in the Arab world saw that the United States was prepared to do this, to push back against Iran, to push back against the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) leadership in the person of Qasem Soleimani, they knew they had a friend,” Pompeo said.

“They knew that they could… build out a set of accords with the State of Israel: these are not disconnected issues, they are deeply connected, one could not happen without the other.”