As far as Abu Dhabi is concerned, cosmetically elevating the already robust, decades-old Kazakh-Israeli partnership will enhance trilateral cooperation and help transform not just the Middle East, but Greater Eurasia into a hotbed for innovation and sustainable development.
Following a nearly five-year hiatus, news broke on Nov. 6, 2025 that Kazakhstan had agreed to join the so-called ‘circle of peace’ at the United States’ behest. Donald Trump’s desperation to breathe new life into his decaying vanity project was indeed the tailwind behind Astana’s ‘wild card’ entry, not least because this unexpected development coincided with the latest C5+1 Summit in Washington and the current U.S administration’s active courtship of the strategically-located Central Asian -stans.
Just as existing Abraham Accords signatories Morocco and Sudan agreed to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in return for Uncle Sam rubber-stamping the former’s territorial claims to Western Sahara and de-designating the latter a State Sponsor of Terrorism, the impending abrogation of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment is a major pull factor for Kazakhstan to partake in Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’. That said and notwithstanding how a bold move of this kind by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev will ensure his country is no longer an afterthought in the eyes of senior American policymakers, the UAE also has its reasons for covertly accelerating Israel’s normalization drive.
At a time when Emirati higher-ups find themselves under enormous pressure from the Arab Street to end their collaboration with an increasingly radioactive Jerusalem, welcoming a fellow oil-rich “middle power” and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member into the Abrahamic fold all but vindicates the Bani Fatima brothers’ decision to stay the course and disregard the will of its people. The fact that Abu Dhabi remains among the top ten foreign investors in Kazakhstan and doubled its cumulative inflows during the first half of 2025 relative to the corresponding period last year, is, in and of itself, a powerful enough lever to arm-twist Astana into closer foreign policy alignment.
Nonetheless, convincing a forward-thinking nation which prides itself on ‘multi-vectored’ international relations to bolster engagement with the very same Jewish state it has recognized since 1992 was never a particularly hard sell. Given that no self-respecting Arab leader would consider striking a grand bargain with Israel against the backdrop of its ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza and scorched-earth adventurism across the wider Levant, reinvigorating what is widely believed to be the crowning achievement of Trump’s first term as commander-in-chief required looking beyond the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for prospective “peace candidates”.
Incidentally, Azerbaijan – another post-Soviet republic that boasts strong commercial links and an ideological kinship with the Emirates – had been tipped as a frontrunner for admission to the accords months before neighbouring Kazakhstan threw its hat into the ring. However, the 12-day conflagration between Israel and Iran this summer somewhat altered Azeri dictator Ilham Aliyev’s calculus as Baku stood accused of facilitating IDF-led airstrikes on the likes of Tabriz, Ardabil and Rasht – not to mention suspected foul play in the helicopter crash a year and a half ago that killed ex-Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his then Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian near the Iran-Azerbaijan border.
Strengthening its unholy alliance with the “Zionist entity” while endorsing the construction of a transport corridor linking mainland Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave via Armenia’s Syunik province that entails “redrawing borders” to the Islamic Republic’s detriment would have inevitably elicited a harsh response from the clerical establishment in Tehran. A far safer bet for the Aliyev regime to ingratiate itself with the White House and be permanently exempted from Section 907 of the Freedom Act was to sign an enduring peace settlement with arch-foe Armenia at the Oval Office in early August and subsequently credit Trump with restoring stability in the South Caucasus.
Yet for Tokayev and his cabinet ministers, cozying up to Israel is practically a cost-free endeavour with unlimited perks should they play their cards right. By virtue of being situated thousands of miles away from West Asian theatres of conflict and home to an overwhelmingly apolitical population that gives little thought to the plight of Palestinians or other downtrodden communities for that matter, the Kazakh leadership does not fear any real blowback from extending its hand of friendship to a globally-accepted pariah state.
If anything, the Kazakh top brass were likely emboldened to pursue such action by their Emirati counterparts, for whom the negative optics of deviating from the Arab League orthodoxy and legitimizing a modern-day apartheid are more than offset by the material gains accrued as a result of rapprochement with Israel. Kazakhstan, for instance, is hoping its futuristic capital Astana and leafy metropolis Almaty replicate Dubai’s success at attracting Israeli leisure travellers as well as long-term residents en masse, including those who have worn out their welcome in other popular destinations such as Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Beyond the aggressive tourism push that Kazakh authorities have embarked on in recent years, they are equally bent on fuelling the country’s digital evolution and buoyant start-up ecosystem by luring “high-value foreigners” from enterprising, tech-savvy nations like Israel to settle down there. More importantly, though, Tokayev is angling for the kind of PR makeover and reputation-laundering the Emirati ruling class has benefited from thanks to their participation in the accords.
His handling of the 2022 Bloody January uprising that resulted in 238 casualties was reminiscent of the draconian counter-revolution Gulf monarchs mounted in response to the Arab Spring – namely issuing shoot-to-kill orders, soliciting external help, summarily purging thousands of private citizens on national security grounds and dismissing protesters as “terrorists” rather than addressing their legitimate grievances about high fuel prices and the worst excesses of Tokayev’s corrupt predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The 72-year-old incumbent’s failure to make good on his lofty ‘New Kazakhstan’ pledge and introduce wholesale democratic reforms suggests it may only be a matter of time before he reverts back to his old ways in the name of maintaining public order. Both Tokayev and his Emirati opposite number Mohammad Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MbZ) harbour a deep-seated mistrust of their own inhabitants, rendering Israel’s sophisticated intelligence-gathering capabilities that much more indispensable to Abu Dhabi and Astana in pre-empting civil unrest.
It is worth recalling that Israeli-made Pegasus spyware had long been the UAE’s weapon of choice to keep tabs on human rights defenders, local activists, exiled journalists and even out-of-favour princesses. The Kazakh government was likewise discovered to have been a client of Pegasus’ Herzliya-based parent developer NSO Group by Amnesty International’s Security Lab back in 2021 and linked to 2,000 data-harvesting cases that targeted the country’s political and business elite.
Ultimately, Kazakhstan’s “firm and irreversible” commitment to the Abraham Accords serves as an insurance policy of sorts for the like-minded Emiratis should war-ravaged Sudan, which has still not exchanged ambassadors with Israel, exit the multilateral initiative altogether over the UAE’s outsized role in condemning Africa’s former breadbasket to arguably the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. In light of even Bahrain temporarily suspending its economic dealings with Israel and recalling its chief envoy during the early days of the Gaza onslaught, the onus is on “Little Sparta” to do more that content itself with paying lip service to the Palestinian cause.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s has refused to budge on the issue of Palestinian statehood as a precondition for any future agreement with Israel despite Trump dangling a NATO-esque defense pact in front of Riyadh, slow-walking the declassification of the 9/11 documents, green-lightning the sale of F-35 fighter jets and going out of his way to cover Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s (MBS’) tracks in the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist and DAWN MENA founder Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. Either way, Kazakhstan is much more than a mere consolation prize for the Kingdom shelving its pre-October 7th 2023 plans to become a member of the Abrahamic bloc.
Whereas the House of Saud formalizing its hitherto unofficial relationship with Israel would have paved the way for other Middle Eastern jurisdictions to follow suit, integrating Central Asia’s biggest and most prosperous economy into the accords as the next best alternative sets an entirely new precedent. The Circle of Peace is now no longer confined to a specific geography, but rather global in dimension and scope as its most bullish stakeholders – namely Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump and MbZ – have the last laugh.
[Image by Lena1964 from Pixabay]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
