Donald Trump needed a win and he has received a thumping one with the surprise peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
The administration appears to have played an important role in helping to broker the deal which will do much to shake up the status quo in a region where good news has been rare.
Like any deal in the Middle East, it is not perfect, but this agreement to normalise relations has far more upside than downside.
Firstly the move makes the UAE just the third Arab country and the first Gulf state to have diplomatic relations with Israel after Egypt and Jordan, sending a message to others in the region that such deals are still possible even as the Palestinian question remains unresolved.
Secondly the agreement halts, at least for now, the damaging threat by Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu to unilaterally annex large chunks of the West Bank.
As the UAE warned Israel earlier this year, that sort of action would have all but precluded any hope of closer ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors for many years.
Thirdly, both Israel and the UAE are staunchly anti-Iran and as such their agreement will strengthen the regional alliance against Tehran and its terrorist proxies in the region.
And fourthly, the agreement opens up opportunities for these two high tech modern countries to trade and share technology, create jobs and generate commerce.
The initial reaction from Palestinian authorities has been hostile, saying the UAE’s deal amount to treason by another Arab country to strike peace with Israel.
Palestinians argue that the UAE has rewarded Israel for its occupation of the West Bank and its threat to annex territory. But at a practical level, the agreement is good for the Palestinians because it halts for now Netanyahu’s threat of annexation.
Netanyahu should now be pressured by Washington and by the global community to ensure that his annexation plans are shelved rather than merely placed on ice.
For Netanyahu, the deal shows that he can make peace with Arab nations despite his refusal to move forward with negotiations with the Palestinian and without reverting to Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
For the UAE, the new link with Israel places more pressure on their mutual enemy Iran and also improves the UAE’s reputation in Washington where it has come under criticism for its role in the civil war in Yemen.
And for Trump, the deal gives him an important diplomatic win in a region where he has struggled to achieve any breakthroughs during his term beside the successful mopping up of the remnants of Islamic State.
The administration’s Middle East peace proposal was released early this year but dead-on-arrival because its pro-Israel bias made in a non-starter for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians.
But with this Israel-UAE deal, Trump can rightly trumpet an important diplomatic win and one which he will no doubt wield loudly on the campaign trail.
(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)
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