US President Donald Trump’s administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing that nation and some Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter.
As part of the Abraham Accords, inked in 2020 and 2021 during Trump’s first term in office, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
Azerbaijan and every country in Central Asia, by contrast, already have longstanding relations with Israel, meaning that an expansion of the accords to include them would largely be symbolic, focusing on strengthening ties in areas like trade and military cooperation, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Such an expansion would reflect Trump’s openness to pacts that are less ambitious than his administration’s goal to convince regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to restore ties with Israel amid its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza.
The kingdom has repeatedly said it would not recognize Israel without steps toward Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state. A soaring death toll in Gaza and reports of hunger in the enclave due to the humanitarian aid crisis and military operations by Israel have buoyed Arab fury, complicating efforts to add more Muslim-majority countries to the Abraham Accords.
The war in Gaza, where over 60,000 people including tens of thousands of women and children have died according to unverified Hamas-controlled health ministry figures that do not differentiate between civilians and combatants, has provoked global anger. Canada, France and the United Kingdom have announced plans in recent days to recognize an independent Palestine.
Another key sticking point is Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbor Armenia, since the Trump administration considers a peace deal between the two Caucasus nations as a precondition to join the Abraham Accords, three sources said.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, right, and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan pose for a photo prior to their talks in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, July 10, 2025. (Azerbaijani Presidential Press Office via AP)
While Trump officials have publicly floated several potential entrants into the accords, the talks centered on Azerbaijan are among the most structured and serious, the sources said. Two of the sources argued a deal could be reached within months or even weeks.
Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, traveled to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in March to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Aryeh Lightstone, a key Witkoff aide, met Aliyev later in the spring in part to discuss the Abraham Accords, three of the sources said.
As part of the discussions, Azerbaijani officials have contacted officials in Central Asian nations, including in nearby Kazakhstan, to gauge their interest in a broader Abraham Accords expansion, those sources said. It was not clear which other countries in Central Asia — which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — were contacted.
The State Department, asked for comment, did not discuss specific countries, but said expanding the accords has been one of the key objectives of Trump. “We are working to get more countries to join,” said a US official.
The Azerbaijani government declined to comment.
The White House, Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Kazakhstani embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Any new accords would not modify the previous Abraham Accords deals signed by Israel.
Obstacles remain
The original Abraham Accords — inked between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — were centered on restoration of ties. The second round of expansion appears to be morphing into a broader mechanism designed to expand US and Israeli soft power.
Wedged between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, Azerbaijan occupies a critical link in trade flows between Central Asia and the West. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, prompting various major powers to compete for influence in the region.
Expanding the accords to nations that already have diplomatic relations with Israel may also be a means of delivering symbolic wins to an American president who is known to talk up even relatively small victories.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kazakhstan’s then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana, December 14, 2016 (Haim Zach/GPO)
Two sources described the discussions involving Central Asia as embryonic — but the discussions with Azerbaijan as relatively advanced.
But challenges remain and there is no guarantee a deal will be reached, particularly with slow progress in talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The two countries, which both won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh — an Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population — broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
In 2023, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, prompting about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. Both sides have since said they want to sign a treaty on a formal end to the conflict.
Ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh travel on a truck on their way to Kornidzor, Armenia, on September 26, 2023. (Stepan Poghosyan, Photolure photo via AP, File)
Primarily Christian Armenia and the US have close ties, and the Trump administration is wary of taking action that could upset authorities in Yerevan.
Still, US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself, have argued that a peace deal between those two nations is near.
“Armenia and Azerbaijan, we worked magic there,” Trump told reporters earlier in July. “And it’s pretty close.”
You appreciate our journalism
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
You clearly find our careful reporting valuable, in a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.
Your support is essential to continue our work. We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically since October 7.
So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6 a month you’ll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Join Our Community
Join Our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘272776440645465’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);