Who’s Next? Reading the Abraham Accords Expansion Rankings After the 2026 Iran War

Executive Summary. On 8 October 2026, the Council for a Secure America (CSA) released a 52-page assessment ranking nine Muslim-majority states without formal ties to Israel by their likelihood of joining the Abraham Accords, placing Kuwait first, Lebanon second, and Syria third, with Iran last. The report’s most consequential finding is not who leads, but who has fallen back: Saudi Arabia, long treated as the Accords’ ultimate prize, is reported fourth, with CSA attributing the shift to the 2026 Iran War rather than to any change in Riyadh’s underlying interest. The ranking reframes “momentum” as reversible, not cumulative.

Key Findings

• The Council for a Secure America, a nonpartisan U.S. research organization, published “Abraham Accords Expansion Opportunities Report: Middle East Analysis” on 8 October 2026, scoring Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran on willingness and political capacity to normalize with Israel.¹
• Kuwait ranks first, with Israel’s ambassador to the UAE, Yossi Shelley, reportedly suggesting in September 2026 that Kuwait could join within six months; Lebanon and Syria follow in second and third.²
• Saudi Arabia, despite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stating in November 2025 that he was prepared to work toward joining the Accords, is reported fourth — a decline CSA attributes to the 2026 Iran War and heightened wariness over Israel’s regional military alliances, not to a reversal of the Crown Prince’s own stated position.³
• Kuwait itself came under Iranian attack during the 2026 Iran War, which makes its first-place ranking notable: direct exposure to the conflict CSA cites as the reason for Saudi hesitation did not produce comparable hesitation in Kuwait’s case, at least as reflected in this ranking.&sup4;
• CSA’s own country-level polling shows double-digit shifts in both Syria and Lebanon across 2025–2026: Syrian approval of a security arrangement with Israel reached roughly two-thirds in CSA’s February 2026 wave, while Lebanese respondents registered majority-negative views of Hezbollah’s military presence in the same period — both read by CSA as openings, though neither poll result is itself a government commitment.&sup5;

Problem Statement

Abraham Accords coverage, GDCI’s own prior cycles included, has generally treated expansion as a one-directional process: accession events (Kazakhstan, the UAE’s Pax Silica role) accumulate, and the only live question is which state joins next. The CSA ranking disrupts that frame by placing a single geopolitical shock — the 2026 Iran War — as the explanatory variable for a candidate’s reported decline in likelihood, specifically Saudi Arabia’s slide from presumptive capstone state to fourth place. A framework built on the assumption that momentum only accumulates has no vocabulary for a ranking in which the most consequential movement is backward.

Evidence & Analysis

The CSA report is explicit that its rankings “reflect conditions prior to the time of publication” and may change — language that treats likelihood as a snapshot of a volatile regional moment rather than a forecast of a stable trajectory.¹ That framing is reinforced by the gap between the Crown Prince’s own November 2025 statement of readiness and the report’s fourth-place assessment less than a year later: the stated policy position of the one head of state most often named as the Accords’ ultimate prize had not, as far as located reporting shows, changed, yet the external assessment of Saudi likelihood had moved.³

Kuwait’s first-place position complicates a simple “conflict deters normalization” reading. Kuwait was directly targeted during the same Iran War that CSA cites as the reason for Saudi caution, and yet ranks first rather than lower.&sup4; One available reading, consistent with but not confirmed by the sourcing located for this brief, is that CSA’s methodology weighs a state’s public opinion and domestic political capacity (where Kuwait’s polling and Ambassador Shelley’s six-month estimate point toward near-term movement) separately from regional alliance exposure (where Saudi Arabia’s position as a security umbrella for the region makes Israeli military entanglements more costly to associate with). CSA’s own stated methodology lists both factors as inputs, but the report’s full country-by-country scoring was not available to this brief, and no secondary source reviewed broke out how each factor was weighted per country.&sup6;

Syria’s third-place position rests substantially on President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s own September 2026 statement that the two sides had “almost reached agreements on 90 percent” of outstanding issues, paired with CSA polling showing roughly two-thirds Syrian approval of a security arrangement with Israel in its February 2026 wave.² Lebanon’s second place rests on a comparable pairing: domestic consolidation of arms under President Joseph Aoun’s state authority, and CSA polling showing majority-negative Lebanese views of Hezbollah’s military presence.&sup5; In both cases, the ranking leans on a head-of-state statement and a polling trend rather than on a signed framework or announced date — a distinction GDCI’s own “Never infer” discipline requires stating plainly rather than let the ranking’s confident numbering imply more certainty than the underlying record supports.

Policy Implications

A ranking that can move a state backward without any change in that state’s own declared position should caution against reading Abraham Accords “momentum” as a single cumulative score. For monitoring purposes, Saudi Arabia’s fourth-place standing is best read as a statement about regional risk perception in October 2026, not as a retraction of Riyadh’s own stated intent — and the two should be tracked and reported separately rather than collapsed into one number.

Recommendations

1. GDCI’s Source Monitoring should log Abraham Accords expansion rankings (CSA’s and any comparable future releases) as time-stamped snapshots tied to the regional conditions in which they were produced, not as a running scoreboard, given CSA’s own disclaimer that the rankings reflect conditions “prior to the time of publication.”
2. Future GDCI coverage of this ranking should obtain and cite the CSA report’s full 52-page text directly — including its complete country-by-country scoring for Oman, Qatar, Iraq, and Yemen, which no secondary source reviewed for this brief disclosed — rather than relying solely on secondary media accounts of the top and bottom positions.
3. Analysts tracking Saudi Arabia’s normalization trajectory should distinguish explicitly between the Crown Prince’s own public statements of intent and third-party assessments of regional risk, since this report shows the two can diverge without either side issuing a retraction.

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Sources

1. Council for a Secure America, “Abraham Accords Expansion Opportunities Report: Middle East Analysis,” 8 October 2026. https://councilforsecureamerica.org/research-and-insights/abraham-accords-report-2026/
2. The Media Line, “Kuwait, Lebanon and Syria Emerge as Top Abraham Accords Prospects,” 11 October 2026. https://themedialine.org/headlines/kuwait-lebanon-and-syria-emerge-as-top-abraham-accords-prospects/
3. The Jerusalem Post, “Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria leading options for Abraham Accords expansion, CSA report assesses,” 11 October 2026. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/abraham-accords/article-911306
4. Ibid.; The Media Line (Source 2).
5. Council for a Secure America (Source 1), citing CSA/YouGov polling of Syrian and Lebanese respondents, October 2025–June 2026 waves.
6. GDCI Writing Guidelines, Part Three, §3.4. (No source reviewed for this brief disclosed the full country-by-country scoring for Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Iraq, and Yemen beyond their unranked mention; this is stated here as a documented gap rather than inferred.)