Abraham Accords states hold first meeting since October 7, 2023
Not far from the United Nations headquarters, where its 81st General Assembly is being held, U.S. diplomats quietly launched an effort to expand the Abraham Accords from one of the towers in Midtown Manhattan.
U.S. State Department officials participated on Thursday morning in the first official meeting of the Abraham Accords signatories—the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco—since October 7, 2023, when a Hamas attack on Israel stalled efforts to expand the accords to include other countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Kazakh officials joined the meeting for the first time after expressing interest in joining the accords last year.
Hucker said, “After nearly three years since the events of October 7, the Abraham Accords countries have come back together,” adding that President Trump championed these historic accords during his first term, and that the day marks an important indicator that the accords are “moving forward again.”
The meeting was hosted by the U.S.-based N7 Foundation, which has been convening multilateral meetings among the Abraham Accords signatories since 2021.
Jeffrey Talbines, founder of N7 and chair of the meeting, said, “The next phase is focused on deepening existing relationships and identifying practical opportunities for joint cooperation among these countries.”
Another senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told CBS News that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s team and Steve Witkoff, the White House special envoy for peace missions, are “clearly prioritizing this effort.”
Also attending the meeting were Ariye Laitstein, special advisor to the Gaza Peace Council; Ryan Arant, head of Under Secretary Hucker’s office at the State Department; and Oren Eisner, head of the N7 Foundation.
The Abraham Accords are a set of agreements that led to the normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and several countries in the region. The first agreement was signed in 2020, near the end of President Trump’s first term.
Prior to the Hamas attacks on October 7, there was growing momentum for Saudi Arabia and other countries to join the accords, but the attack and the subsequent wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran derailed that trajectory.
President Trump announced Kazakhstan’s intention to join the Abraham Accords during a meeting in the Oval Office with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in 2025.
At the time, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “We will soon announce the official signing ceremony for the agreement, and there are many other countries seeking to join this ‘power club.’”
A Kazakh embassy official told CBS News that Thursday’s meeting represents a concrete step toward expanding the scope of the accords.
The official said, “We are very excited to join the Abraham Accords and about what this partnership can achieve. We are interested in cooperation in technology and transportation, and together we can accomplish more than any single country can achieve alone.”
Participants discussed the steps required to elevate cooperation among the accords’ signatories to the official level, according to a source familiar with the details of the meeting.
Jeffrey Talbines, founder of N7, said, “The Abraham Accords have proven what can be achieved when countries come together around shared interests and a unified vision for a more integrated and prosperous region.”
