From Normalization to Geopolitical Stress Test: The Abraham Accords After Five Years

This article examines the Abraham Accords (AA) 5 years after their signing, reconceptualizing them as a stress-tested security framework rather than a linear normalization project. Drawing on regional security developments—including the Hamas–Israel war, Houthi maritime attacks, the collapse of the Assad regime, and Iran–Israel confrontations—the article evaluates how conflict both constrains and reinforces normalization. It also assesses how key political actors perceive the Accords as a security framework. It argues that the Accords endure because they serve convergent strategic interests, particularly regarding deterrence, intelligence sharing, and economic resilience, even as their public legitimacy waxed and waned over the years. The findings highlight a dual dynamic: while the Accords have not deterred regional escalation, they have enhanced operational coordination under crisis conditions. Overall, it contends that the AA have transitioned from a transformative vision to a pragmatic mechanism of selective cooperation, whose future depends less on expansion than on resilience, recalibration, and alignment with evolving regional threat perceptions and differentiated Gulf security preferences, as well as the durability of US-anchored security architectures in an increasingly multipolar Middle East. By bridging competing transformative and component interpretations, the article offers a synthesized framework for understanding normalization under conditions of protracted conflict and strategic uncertainty.