President Donald Trump is pursuing an activist foreign policy, pressing its allies and partners to rapidly step up and contribute to keeping international peace. In this abrupt change and transformation period, many of the established frameworks for international cooperation are being stress-tested while new ones emerge.
One newly created cooperative framework currently stands out as having a great potential for becoming a locomotive for security and economic cooperation. The innovative Abraham Accords framework, a key accomplishment of the first Trump Administration, has weathered its first wars (in Gaza and Lebanon), demonstrating that it can be a nascent framework for the benefit of the signatory nations and the U.S.A.
The logical next step is to expand the scope and reach of the Accords as a coalition of the willing to advance prosperity and security, extending the membership beyond the cradle of the Accords’ birth in the Middle East to include friendly nations in the South Caucasus and Central Asia to form a larger arc of cooperation.
In this light, the thirty-year-old Israel-Azerbaijan partnership stands out as a security asset waiting to be recognized and embraced by Washington. This trans-regional alignment originated from apprehension on the part of Jerusalem and Baku that Iran and its proxies ultimately sought their destruction. It deepened over time to encompass new economic and security domains, exemplified by the recent high-level Azerbaijani trade mission to Israel to formalize the involvement of SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, in gas exploration in Israeli waters. This latest advance has the potential to increase trade between Israel and Türkiye, and for Baku’s long standing relationship with Türkiye to help ease tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem, especially over Syria.
Taking advantage of the possibility of incorporating countries such as Azerbaijan into the Abraham Accords offers Washington a vital opportunity to help keep Iran’s ambitions in check in the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia as President Trump puts maximum pressure on Teheran to dismantle its dangerous nuclear program. Further, an expanded Accords framework can offer an alternative to Sino-Russian efforts to mold the geopolitical and geoeconomic space in the Caucasus and Central Asia to serve and promote Beijing’s and Moscow’s agendas. Previous publications have emphasized this partnership’s potential regarding the Middle East and the Caucasus. Still, few have talked about the benefits it could bring to the U.S. and Central Asian states.
Bringing Azerbaijan into closer alignment through the Abraham Accords could further cooperation for the U.S. with the Caucasus and with Central Asia, where Baku is already a regional leader. Indeed, Azerbaijan has already signaled its desire to improve ties with the U.S., not merely in expectation of anti-Iranian cooperation. Oil and minerals-rich Kazakhstan, which already has friendly relations with Israel, might be interested in joining the Accords and partnering with Azerbaijan and Israel. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan also have excellent relations with the United Arab Emirates, a pillar of the Accords.
Conventional thinking about Israel and Azerbaijan restricts them to the Middle East and the Caucasus. However, their partnership offers Washington a foundation for substantive, durable security and economic gains in the Caucasus-Central Asia axis.
Many Central Asian states, grasping the dangers of Russian, Chinese, and terrorist threats, have begun to prioritize military viability. Kazakhstan, perhaps the leader in the region in this regard, is already advocating for Central Asian defense cooperation and is quickly moving to become the dominant Caspian naval power. Whereas Türkiye (and possibly Azerbaijan, Israel, and, to some degree, the U.S.) are already engaged in security cooperation with Central Asia, more meaningful U.S. and Israeli security and military cooperation with willing Central Asian states, possibly including increased arms sales, could become a feature of an expanded Abraham Accords.
Perhaps most urgently, the threat of water shortages hangs over Central Asia and Azerbaijan. This progressing crisis can threaten millions of people's livelihood, health, and environment on both sides of the Caspian and other bodies of water like the Aral Sea throughout Central Asia. It is something that all could focus on through the Accords framework, putting Israel’s experience with efficient water management and US irrigation tech to work for the benefit of all.
The Azerbaijan-Israel-UAE partnership can benefit not only these three states but also the U.S. and other states from the Levant to Central Asia. The possibilities of large-scale U.S. and U.S.-led trade and investment in these regions are far-reaching. Unlike Russian and Chinese-led trans-regional organizations that are driven by great power ambitions, an expanded Abraham Accords framework can address the shared need for security, expand to energy, and even be scaled to encompass a broader environmental agenda for mutual benefit while opening additional opportunities for American trade and assisting the Trump Administration to curb Iranian, Russian, and Chinese opportunism and ambition in all these regions. Expanding alliances and incorporating Azerbaijan in the Abraham Accords is the next logical step that should not be neglected even in these challenging times.