#A huge step forward for Arab-Israeli peace — and against Iran

Tuesday’s signing of the Abraham Accords marks a major step forward that once seemed impossible, toward peace between Israel and all its Arab neighbors.

More, it represents a vast regional alignment against Iran’s revolutionary regime, and thus a huge gain for the United States — The Great Satan, as Tehran’s rulers call our nation.

We can’t say what other Arab nations will follow Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in ending formal hostility with the Jewish state, or how soon. But President Trump’s diplomacy has already greatly eased tensions even with countries that aren’t taking that step — and fundamentally shifted relations.

No longer do other Arab states insist on a “peace deal” that grants a Palestinian state concessions that would mean the end of Israel, as they have for decades. That infuriates the terrorists and (sort of) ex-terrorists who control Gaza and the West Bank — but it brings the possibility of an actual Israeli-Palestinian settlement closer.

For half a century, the Arab states encouraged Palestinians and their leaders in making impossible demands and spent big to feed anti-Semitic hate. And much of the civilized world played along, as Western diplomats ran an endless “peace process” that kept them employed without ever doing much for peace.

But then President Barack Obama upended everything by moving to appease Iran — abandoning America’s traditional allies in the Arab world as well as Israel. For all the later talk of European allies furious at President Trump for his demands that other NATO members spend as much on defense as they’re supposed to, Obama’s betrayal was a far bigger deal to Middle East nations.

So when Trump took office and reversed course — ditching Obama’s nuclear deal, and working to revive America’s traditional Mideast alliances — he met with rapid success.

To be clear, neither Israel nor the Arabs will ever rely on Washington as they once did: Joe Biden might win in November, and the Biden-Harris (Harris-Biden?) presidency would reverse course yet again. So the Arabs feel compelled to work with Israel against their mutual enemies in Tehran.

It helps that Trump refused to honor even the pre-Obama nostrums: He defied all conventional wisdom by recognizing the reality that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, and moving the US embassy there. The doom his critics predicted failed to materialize, because Arab leaders realized they had far more important things to worry about.

Bottom line: It’s a new Middle East, with real hope on the horizon — at least as long as Trump stays in the White House.