Trump Announces Kazakhstan Joining Abraham Accords Despite Existing Diplomatic Relations with Israel Since 1992

President Trump announced at the C5+1 summit in Washington that Kazakhstan would join the Abraham Accords, becoming the first nation to do so during his second term. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and leaders from four other Central Asian states attended the announcement. However, the substantive significance of the announcement remained unclear, as Kazakhstan has maintained full diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992—over three decades before the Abraham Accords existed. The move appeared to be a largely symbolic rebranding of existing bilateral ties rather than a breakthrough in normalization.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the announcement’s significance, claiming it constituted an “enhanced relationship beyond just diplomatic relations” involving economic development and partnerships with other Abraham Accord countries. However, experts characterized the announcement as potentially little more than a Kazakh effort to curry favor with Trump, with no immediate substantive change to the diplomatic or economic relationship between Kazakhstan and Israel. The announcement exemplified a pattern of repackaging existing foreign policy arrangements as Trump administration achievements.

The timing served Trump’s broader agenda of building momentum for Abraham Accords expansion ahead of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s planned November 18 visit to Washington. Trump claimed that “many more countries” were lining up to join the Accords, using the Kazakhstan announcement as evidence of diplomatic success. The announcement allowed Trump to claim credit for Middle East diplomacy while obscuring that the “normalization” being celebrated had occurred 33 years earlier under different circumstances and involved no new commitments or breakthroughs in 2025.