As of the beginning of 2020, the State of Israel shared diplomatic relations with only two Arab counties: Egypt and Jordan. One of the aims of the U.S. presidential administration of Donald J. Trump was to persuade more Arab countries to recognize Israel’s sovereignty as an avenue to assure a greater degree of peace and stability in the Middle East and thereby to counter the influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its surrogates, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. At a White House reception on January 28, 2020, President Trump made a speech outlining his “vision for peace” in the Middle East. This plan called for an enlarged Jewish state and a much smaller Palestinian one. An opportunity soon arose when one of the attendees at the reception, Yousef Al-Otaiba, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Washington, D.C.—motivated by fears that the United States would support Israeli plans to annex greater areas in the Palestinian West Bank—issued an op-ed in an Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, criticizing the move and hinting that there might be alternative paths to insuring Israel’s security. Avi Berkowitz, who was the Trump administration’s special representative for international negotiations, saw a possible opening and arranged a series of meetings, first with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then with Otaiba to propose the establishment of diplomatic relations between their two countries. These talks were approved by Berkowitz’s immediate supervisor, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the president himself. As talks progressed successfully through July and into August 2020, the Kingdom of Bahrain asked to be included. On September 15, 2020, the document establishing normal relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain was officially signed in Washington. It was named the Abraham Accords in reference to the patriarch Abraham, who is believed by Jews and Muslims to be their common ancestor.