How Trump Uses International Agreements As Agents of Disorder in the Arab World

This article examines how the United States under President Donald Trump has used negotiations and international agreements as instruments for eroding the established rules of the international order in the Arab world and its regional surroundings. It does so through an analysis of three cases: the nuclear agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia, the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding, and the Israeli-Lebanese framework agreement.

Nuclear Agreement with Saudi Arabia

On 22 July, the United States and Saudi Arabia announced that they had reached a nuclear agreement under which Washington would provide Riyadh with the necessary technology and materials and construct reactors for electricity generation in return for tens of billions of dollars.

The agreement has not yet been published, suggesting that it contains provisions that one or both parties would prefer not to defend publicly. Leaked reports indicate that it leaves open the possibility of domestic uranium enrichment to produce the fuel required to operate the reactors. It also reportedly does not make Saudi accession to the Additional Protocol to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s safeguards agreements a precondition.

The agreement nevertheless assigns the United States responsibility for ensuring that the Saudi programme is not diverted towards military purposes. This responsibility would reportedly include inspection functions exceeding the Kingdom’s existing legal obligations towards the IAEA.

The leaked provisions have raised questions about the double standards applied by the United States to domestic uranium enrichment. They have also prompted Israel to criticise the agreement and express serious concerns about its implications. President Trump consequently sought to reassure Israel the following day, declaring in a public post that the implementation of the nuclear agreement would be conditional upon Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords.

The statement suggested that the nuclear agreement would be offered to Saudi Arabia in return for abandoning its position on the establishment of a Palestinian state. It also disregarded the original justification presented for the accession of several Arab states to the Abraham Accords in 2020: halting Israeli annexation and settlement policies. Those policies have instead expanded considerably since the accords were signed.

Although the text of the US-Saudi agreement remains unpublished, the available information suggests that it follows the model of the nuclear cooperation treaties known as “123 Agreements,” named after Section 123 of the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Such agreements require the United States to obtain assurances that American nuclear materials and technologies supplied to another state will not be diverted towards military purposes. They must also establish safeguards through which compliance can be verified.

The 2008 nuclear cooperation agreement between the United Arab Emirates and the United States, which preceded the construction of the Emirati Barakah nuclear plant eventually awarded to South Korea, went considerably beyond the requirements of conventional agreements. It included the UAE’s accession to the IAEA Additional Protocol and its renunciation of domestic uranium enrichment, nuclear-fuel production, and the reprocessing of spent fuel.

These additional restrictions on the sovereign rights of the state concerned led the American-Emirati arrangement to be described as the new “gold standard” for nuclear non-proliferation.

Closer examination of the domestic enrichment provision—the issue that has dominated coverage of the US-Saudi agreement—shows that it amounts to little more than a joint two-year feasibility study examining whether domestic nuclear-fuel production would be viable.

Any serious scientific study would almost certainly conclude that such a project is unviable. Economically, the costs would be prohibitive. Politically, it would expose Saudi Arabia to intensive inspections and recurrent accusations of diversion. Environmentally, it would create risks associated with the handling of enriched materials and nuclear waste, including the possibility of radioactive leakage.

Even if domestic fuel production were eventually authorised, the leaked terms suggest that it would take place inside a sealed American “black box” facility on Saudi territory, without the transfer of meaningful technical knowledge to the Saudi side.

The enrichment question therefore appears to be primarily a means of marketing the agreement rather than a programme that either party genuinely intends to pursue. It also suggests that one of Washington’s principal objectives is to pressure Saudi Arabia into joining the Abraham Accords. The United States is thus attaching subjective political conditions to established international rules governing the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

MoU with Iran

The memorandum of understanding with Iran was formulated in a manner that accommodated several Iranian demands. Its fourteen-point structure was based on a paper submitted by Iran to the mediators during an early stage of the negotiations.

The first paragraph called for the cessation of war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, respect for Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity, and an end to the threat or use of force. President Trump failed to honour these principles from the first day. He continued to threaten Iran with overwhelming force should it refuse to submit to American demands.

Trump subsequently instructed his secretary of state to develop a separate negotiating track between Lebanon and Israel, seeking to decouple the Lebanese and Iranian fronts in accordance with Israel’s position, even though the memorandum remained formally in force.

A similar contradiction emerged over the Strait of Hormuz. Paragraph Five of the memorandum called for Iran to reopen the strait and assume responsibility for guaranteeing free passage throughout the duration of the agreement. Yet the United States immediately began developing a maritime route farther from Iranian shores, apparently intending to remove control of the strait from Iran without even awaiting the outcome of the negotiations.

The same pattern was evident in the memorandum’s provisions on lifting sanctions and releasing frozen Iranian assets for Iran’s sole use. Trump insisted that he would not hand over “a single cent” to Tehran. Vice-President J.D. Vance repeatedly claimed that the funds would be restricted to the purchase of American foodstuffs, procured by the United States on Iran’s behalf.

The memorandum also proposed the creation of a $300 billion compensation and reconstruction fund financed by Washington’s Gulf allies. Those states had not been consulted about the arrangement. Several subsequently expressed reservations and demanded that Iran itself provide compensation.

The dispute extended to the memorandum’s provisions concerning negotiations over Iran’s highly enriched nuclear material and the temporary freezing of its nuclear programme. The American side interpreted these provisions as requiring Iran to hand over its nuclear material and dismantle its programme completely.

Iran, by contrast, had no intention of abandoning what it regarded as a peaceful nuclear programme or transferring its highly enriched uranium to the United States. Its position was that the uranium should be down-blended inside Iran under international supervision.

When Trump realised that Iran intended to hold firmly to the terms recorded in the memorandum, and that the methods of real-estate bargaining would not succeed with Tehran—or even with the mediators whom Washington had carefully selected because of their close personal relationships with the president—he quickly abandoned the agreement and returned the war to its previous course.

In doing so, he spared Israel the burden of directly participating in the renewed hostilities and shielded it from some of the consequences that such participation might have produced.

The Israeli-Lebanese Framework Agreement

The framework agreement concerning Lebanon reflects the same approach. It sought to decouple the regional fronts, isolate the Lebanese government, and pressure it into negotiating alone. The result was an opaque agreement filled with deliberate ambiguities and loopholes.

The most significant concerned the conditions the Lebanese government would be required to fulfil before Israeli forces could be “enabled” to “redeploy” outside Lebanese territory. The word “withdrawal” did not appear anywhere in the text.

Implementation was to begin not with an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, but with the movement of Israeli troops between positions inside Lebanese territory. Israeli forces would redeploy from agreed pilot areas under their control while the Lebanese army simultaneously entered those areas.

The agreement also assigned the United States responsibility for monitoring the compliance of both parties. This was the same United States whose conduct in supervising the November 2024 ceasefire had demonstrated extensive bias in Israel’s favour.

Most seriously, the complete redeployment of Israeli forces outside Lebanon was made conditional upon the Lebanese army disarming Hezbollah. This amounted to an impossible precondition. Previous experience has shown that Hezbollah cannot be disarmed before Israeli troops withdraw. The Lebanese army lacks the military and political capacity to undertake such an operation, while any attempt to do so could plunge the country into civil war and postpone an Israeli withdrawal indefinitely.

The agreement went further by requiring Lebanon to waive its right to pursue Israel before international institutions.

The American and Israeli sides also created numerous obstacles during negotiations over the designation of the pilot areas. Eventually, it was agreed that the Lebanese army would deploy in three areas that Israel had never occupied—or, more precisely, had attempted and failed to occupy, settling instead for encircling them and keeping them within range of Israeli fire.

During a White House press conference with his Lebanese counterpart on 21 July, President Trump was asked whether he would pressure Israel to withdraw from Lebanese territory. He replied that he supported the “redeployment” of Israeli forces in accordance with the agreement, carefully avoiding the language of withdrawal.

Regarding the promised support for the Lebanese army and the reconstruction of Lebanon, Trump merely affirmed that the United States intended to provide “big” support, without making any specific financial or political commitment. Instead, he sought to transfer responsibility to Saudi Arabia by arranging a telephone call between the Lebanese president and the Saudi crown prince.

Trump was also careful during the press conference to declare that several Arab states would soon join the Abraham Accords, thereby attempting to place the Lebanese president under additional political pressure.

Hollowing Out the Language of International Relations

These cases illustrate a recurrent approach adopted by President Trump and his administration towards international relations and agreements. It owes more to the mentality of a commercial broker negotiating a private transaction than to the principles of international law or the established practices governing relations between states.

This approach treats negotiation as a process of extracting the maximum possible benefit from the other party—the “client.” Deception, factual distortion, coercion, and the unilateral reinterpretation of agreements are accepted as legitimate techniques for securing further concessions.

The same mentality encourages public claims about matters that were never agreed upon or even negotiated, such as Saudi Arabia or Lebanon joining the Abraham Accords. Such claims are made in the expectation that the other party may lack the political will to contest them openly.

There is equally no hesitation in abandoning or violating an agreement once it becomes clear that it will not produce the desired benefit, particularly when the other party insists on the rights it secured through negotiation. This occurred with the American-Iranian memorandum of understanding and with Trump’s peace plan for Gaza.

The agreements concluded under Trump are therefore often not intended to be implemented. Their principal purpose is to give the president an achievement about which he can boast and to reinforce a narrative—believed by few beyond Trump himself, if indeed he believes it—that he is a man of peace, a master deal-maker, and a statesman deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Before long, the agreement is neglected, left unimplemented, repudiated, or replaced by another diplomatic spectacle. Trump then moves on to the next agreement, crisis, or piece of political theatre.

This reflects the strategy described by his former adviser and campaign manager Steve Bannon as “flooding the zone”: overwhelming adversaries and the public with a relentless succession of events, controversies, and competing claims until sustained scrutiny becomes nearly impossible.

Nor is this approach confined to Iran or the Arab states. It has characterised the conduct of the broker-president since his first term.

Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action governing Iran’s nuclear programme, UNESCO, and the Paris Agreement on climate change. During his second term, he withdrew from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change itself and from the World Health Organization.

He has repudiated American trade commitments towards Mexico and Canada, sought to impose tariffs on countries across the world, cast doubt on the value of NATO, and decided without meaningful consultation to withdraw part of the American military presence in Germany established under the alliance’s arrangements.

He has spoken of annexing Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. He has also failed to implement his profoundly imbalanced peace plan for Gaza, which explicitly undermined principles developed over decades to govern the Palestinian question.

That plan also challenged the 2005 annex to the Egyptian-Israeli peace arrangements, which prohibited the presence of Israeli forces along Egypt’s border with Gaza. Trump subsequently allowed Israel to continue its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, striking whomever it wished, whenever it wished, and wherever it wished.

The United States also joined Israel in bombing Iran in June 2025 and February 2026, even as Washington was negotiating with Tehran through Omani and later Pakistani, Qatari, Turkish, and Egyptian mediation.

Under Trump’s leadership, and in cooperation with Israel, the United States is steadily undermining the foundations of the former international order in the region. This process includes the destruction and redefinition of established concepts in international relations: war, peace, ceasefire, negotiation, mediation, and international agreement.

These concepts are increasingly tailored to American-Israeli interests. What is taking place in Gaza and Lebanon is described as a ceasefire. What is occurring between the United States and Iran is classified as something short of an all-out war. International agreements are treated as temporary formalities that were never intended to be implemented, serving instead commercial, political, and propaganda purposes before being discarded once those purposes have been fulfilled.

These are among the defining features of the new international disorder that the United States is unleashing in the Arab region and across the world upon the ruins of the old international order.