Senior US Senator Lindsey Graham has launched a sharp public broadside against Pakistan, declaring it "more than problematic" as a regional mediator after the country rejected US President Donald Trump's call to join Abraham Accords.
He also demanded that Islamabad formally respond to Trump's call to join the Abraham Accords, the US-brokered normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab states.
In a post on X, Graham said Pakistan's "long-standing animosity towards Israel" made its role as any kind of diplomatic intermediary untenable. He went further, making a pointed claim that Iranian military aircraft are being housed on Pakistani air bases — an allegation that, if accurate, would represent a significant escalation in concerns about Islamabad's regional alignments.
The senator's remarks were directly triggered by comments from Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, who publicly rejected any agreement involving Israel, stating it clashed with Pakistan's "fundamental ideologies."
Asif was blunt in his distrust, saying, "How can you sit with people whose word cannot be trusted for even a single day?".
ALSO READ: 'Not Acceptable': Pakistan Rejects Trump's Proposal To Join Abraham Accords
Graham acknowledged the clip may be a year old but said he feared "the sentiment is fresh."
"It is imperative that Pakistan give an answer now to President Trump's call to join the Abraham Accords," Graham wrote.
It has been apparent to me for quite a while that Pakistan as a mediator is more than problematic. Their animosity towards Israel is long standing.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 26, 2026
It is undeniable that Iranian military aircraft are being housed on Pakistani air bases and past rhetoric from the highest… https://t.co/ksLqpw4ZQ4
All these events followed Trump's Truth Social post Monday in which he said he had asked Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan to join the Accords en masse, tying the push to ongoing US-Iran peace negotiations.
Trump framed the request as near-mandatory, saying if Iran too signed a deal with him, "it would be an Honor to have them also be part of this unparalleled World Coalition."
The Abraham Accords, originally signed in 2020, normalised relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Extending the agreements to Pakistan — a nuclear-armed Muslim-majority state with deep historical ties to Palestinian solidarity — would be an extraordinary diplomatic breakthrough, and by all current indications, a distant prospect.
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