Israel’s 2382‑year‑old Purim triumph has evolved into a regional diplomatic aesthetic, where the Abraham Accords extended this very legacy with a coalition that turned Esther’s palace intrigue into a modern framework for collective strategic cooperation against the Iranian proxy threat. Together they offered a reminder that while Iran has refined its ambitions, the region has already formed a coalition that treats deterrence as both policy and historical satire. The message is simple: some threats repeat but so do the outcomes.
The launch of Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion coincided with Purim, the Jewish commemoration of deliverance from ancient Persia. They became the renewed foundation to the values of the Board of Peace. The Trump administration’s assertive posture toward Iran, combining precision strikes, cyber operations, and diplomatic pressure, created the rare geopolitical opening that made this Board possible.
The symbolism is striking: a modern coalition, partially funded by Arab states, led by the United States, and operationalized by Israel, emerges to stabilize a region destabilized by the contemporary heirs of Persian imperial ambition. The Board has hence become a geopolitical Purimspiel, where the actors are real.
“The Board of Peace was conceived in a geopolitical corridor defined chronologically by two double U.S.-Israeli war operations against Iran and its proxy ecosystem, a strategic interval carved by two successive parallel actions that redefined deterrence from the preemptive to the synchromech, and the strength’s scale from the obliterative to the overwhelming and the unapologetical.”
I. Board of Peace Through Collective Strength
Since 2020, key milestones have included the Trump-launched, UN-endorsed “Board of Peace” framework and a series of military operations: from Rising Lion, Midnight Hammer to Epic Fury and Roaring Lion, designed to counter Iranian nuclear and proxy activity while preventing entanglement. Israel’s maintaining the Lion in both Operations and the upgrade from rising to roaring are very symbolic. The American version refers to not only an Across this period, multilateralism has reflected a strategic progression from President Trump 45’s maximum‑pressure ground based diplomatic campaign on Iran to Trump 47’s B-2 “deeplomatic” style and other over‑the‑horizon methods, that allow states to coordinate their actions and pressure Tehran beyond the conventional extreme soft power and hard power dynamics: mere ceremonial black-tie receptions or boots on the ground.
The U.S. Ambassador to NATO recently stated on his X page that POTUS is “willing to give real diplomacy a chance to solve this peacefully, but if it doesn’t, as he said, it will be a very bad day for Iran.” The approach to the Iranian issue has shifted from a sequence of a real diplomacy opportunity that wasn’t seized by the Iranian regime to a markedly intensified U.S.-Israeli military campaign, whereas the management of the Iranian proxies file, in Gaza for example, has contrastingly transitioned from the usual military self-defense response targeting terror threats to a multilateral diplomatic Pax division, a new diplomatic-spirited military construct: Trump’s Board of Peace, to integrate coercive leverage with eco-diplomatic engineering in a landscape where strategic equilibrium is impossible so long as terror-proxy groups persist.
The Board of Peace was conceived in a geopolitical corridor defined chronologically by two double U.S.-Israeli war operations against Iran and its proxy ecosystem, a strategic interval carved by two successive parallel actions that redefined deterrence from the preemptive to the synchromech, and the strength’s scale from the obliterative to the overwhelming and the unapologetical. Established under President Trump, the Board has marked a decisive shift in the global grammar of post‑conflict governance.
These operations dismantled critical components of Iran’s nuclear, intelligence, and political‑military infrastructure, creating the rare geopolitical opening in which a new governance institution could be launched. All the six U.S. Military branches and regional U.S. Commands joined efforts to secure the mission, including the U.S. Space Force Guardians who were on the invisible front line in Operation Epic Fury and the Airmen and Guardians supporting CENTCOM who have heavily been involved in the success of the first “100 Hours” of Operation Epic Fury, according the Secretary of the Air Force Dr. Troy E. Meink. The first strike degraded Iran’s nuclear and intelligence infrastructure, neutralizing the covert backbone of its regional influence. The second eliminated the Iranian leader Khomeni and key political‑military figures within twenty‑four hours, demonstrating that Iran’s command‑and‑control system was neither resilient nor insulated.
Recent operations have included a series of high‑level engagements with major U.S. defense manufacturers aimed at accelerating production of precision‑guided munitions. These efforts coincide with mounting international pressure for Iran’s unconditional surrender, following a wave of successful U.S. strikes that has rendered Iran’s naval forces effectively combat‑ineffective. In numbers, Iranian ballistic‑missile attacks have dropped by 90 percent, over 5,500 hostile targets have been neutralized, U.S. forces maintain full air superiority, and more than 60 Iranian vessels, including all four Soleimani‑class warships, have been rendered inoperable, reflecting a sharply reduced Iranian capacity for further aggression.
Taken together, these developments have crystal-clearly demonstrated that the United States has effectively won the war and achieved decisive strategic dominance in the conflict. Two interesting elements have caught social media users’ attention, adding more humor and “fun” to the “serious stuff”: the first is the use of cartoons and dance music in U.S. and Israeli official communications, such as Sponge Bob or House Dance. The second is deeply “iranic”: pro-Iran’s most evident weakness was exemplified online through their communicational-propagandist reaction: after evidently scraping the bottom of the barrel, they could not find any more interesting response than modifying officials’ tatoos by AI, to trigger a malicious ideological debate in a vain attempt begging for a facebookian community’s solidarity. In reality, this operation which has occurred during Ramadan, Purim and Lent demonstrated the strong friendship between Jewish-Muslim-Christian Nations in the spirit of a dynamic Abrahamic Movement.
This post-decisive victory on all fronts against the Iranian regime will be followed by a sustained surgical effort to ensure that all military objectives are achieved, a laser-focused finalizer scalpel rather than a (midnight) hammer. This is because Epic Fury has not been designed to end up with another Khomeini. Mojtaba is just another “like father like son”: an unacceptable option that would “not last long” without the U.S. approval.
These engagements reflect Washington’s long‑standing bipartisan doctrine, one of the unified visions that have been exemplified through the State of Union, that Iran must never be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons, a principle that has shaped U.S. policy across administrations for more than four decades. In the current campaign, this doctrine has been translated into the Donroe Doctrine with a laser-focused concrete operational tempo “on-air” instead of boots on the ground.
From the Monroe to the Donroe Doctrine, the U.S. has consistently framed its strategic posture around preventing rogue regimes from gaining the capability to threaten regional peace and stability, a top priority within the American National Security interests. The leadership of the United States to ensure a peaceful world order and a rule-based international system has been central to the American role as the leader of the free world. Nowhere has this continuity been more evident than in Washington’s enduring insistence that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons. This principle has shaped not only diplomatic engagement but also the calibrated military tempo that defines current operations under President Trump’s leadership.
The U.S. forces have executed a sequence of highly calibrated strikes designed to degrade Iran’s strategic assets while minimizing escalation beyond the theater of operations to other regions, including those which host Iranian umbrella proxies such as Gaza.
The Board of Peace is therefore the administrative expression of a new regional order, one in which proxy destabilization will be countered by multiregional economic stabilization, and where U.S. leadership, Israeli capability, and Moroccan diplomacy will converge to shape a durable post‑conflict architecture.
Israel’s role in the Board is not symbolic. Geographically and strategically, the Board is intimately connected to Israel. Israel’s role will be therefore central to designing reconstruction plans that are technically viable, strategically grounded, and resilient. Thanks to its operational expertise in security stabilization and technological advances in security, water management, energy systems, and infrastructure innovation, Israel can become the concrete leader of the Board on the ground while bringing an added value from connected frameworks like the Abraham Accords, I2U2 or PAX SILICA.
“Morocco’s position underscored the Kingdom’s continued anchoring within the transatlantic alliance. Across four successive military operations, Morocco -long an early proponent of distancing itself diplomatically from Iran, a stance visible on three occasions since the era of King Hassan II, who granted asylum to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi- distinguished itself as the most reliable and principled partner in the region.”
Morocco’s role is especially notable: it is the first African signatory to the Abraham Accords and the first to join the Board too, underscoring its position as a bridge between the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. Morocco’s Royal Atlantic Initiative could serve as a link between these interconnected regions and a hub for an expanded African Abraham Accords dynamic. Its Muslim-Jewish historical model will be of an added value for the Board of Peace at large. It is not for no reason that Minister Bourita appeared right next to President Trump on the White House’s main visual communications on its inaugural meeting at President Donald J. Trump U.S. Peace Institute and the Board of Peace itself through its X cover picture, underscoring three main points: the strenght of the U.S.-Moroccan alliance, Morocco’s internationally recognized credible role and the exemplary cooperation and personal friendship between Secretary Rubio and his Moroccan counterpart.
Rabat’s diplomatic posture during Operation Rising Lion further reinforced this alignment. Morocco was the only country in the region that declined to sign the Arab solidarity statement for Iran and the first to condemn Tehran’s missile attacks—strikes that targeted the UAE and Bahrain, two of its fellow Abraham Accords partners. The UAE announced the closure of its Embassy in Tehran and the withdrawal of its Ambassador and Diplomatic Mission. The Kingdom of Morocco denounced the attacks as “abject” and “heinous,” a blatant violation of national sovereignty and an unacceptable infringement on the security of brotherly Arab states, whose stability Morocco considers integral to its own.
Morocco’s position, articulated by Minister Nasser Bourita in line with Royal instructions, underscored the Kingdom’s continued anchoring within the transatlantic alliance. Across four successive military operations, Morocco -long an early proponent of distancing itself diplomatically from Iran, a stance visible on three occasions since the era of King Hassan II, who granted asylum to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi- distinguished itself as the most reliable and principled partner in the region. The broader Arab world, in turn, corrected its earlier drift by issuing a near‑unanimous denunciation of Iran’s strikes. This episode reminds of the series of opening and closure game of embassies in the region by numerous countries which had semi-cut their relations with Iran.
“Morocco’s decisive posture positioned it as a mid‑sized power, architect of a new regional consensus, reinforcing its credibility within Abraham Accords-aligned frameworks and expanding the Board’s geographic aperture beyond the Middle East.”
II. Abraham Accords and Maghreb: a mixed cartography of reactions
The Iranian ubiquitous proxy war has been a central concern for the Abraham Accords countries. Their public statements have consistently emphasized the expected role of the Negev Forum Counterterror Working Group and the UN in addressing this challenge. The United States of America, the architect in-chief-of the Abraham Accords, launched in 2020 by President Trump, has maintained that peace through strength is essential in a region where continued Iranian proxy funding undermines genuine peace.
Morocco’s stance on Iran has distinguished it from other North African and Middle Eastern states. Rabat severed ties with Tehran over its support for Polisario in the wake of reports demonstrating the terror-separatism nexus as unveiled by the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita in 2018. The Kingdom framed Iran not as a distant ideological rival but as a direct threat to the Moroccan sovereignty. This clarity aligned Morocco early with U.S. and Israeli assessments of the Iranian threat, before other countries began to understand the depth of the situation.
Morocco’s stance on the recent Iranian strikes has been clear. In contrast, Algeria maintained ambiguity against the backdrop of its president’s previous meetings with Khomeini. Egypt adopted calibrated caution and Tunisia defaulted to institutional silence. This silence reminds of the so-called neutrality strategy that the country has adopted for years in a Swiss fashion, which it had replicated on the Moroccan Sahara as well years before its new leadership’s view on the subject swerved to align with an Iranian-Algerian rhetoric. Yet, Tunisia’s reaction to the Iran war was shaped by domestic neighboring-exacerbated fragility rather than strategic doctrine. As the conflict escalated, Tunisian authorities issued generic calls for de‑escalation without attributing responsibility or aligning with emerging regional coalitions. Iranian cultural and informal networks have continued to operate in many countries in the region without scrutiny, reinforcing the perception that fragile societies lacked both the bandwidth and the political will to confront Tehran’s destabilizing model. The contrast with Morocco’s clarity further elevated Rabat’s regional profile.
Morocco’s decisive posture positioned it as a mid‑sized power, architect of a new regional consensus, reinforcing its credibility within Abraham Accords-aligned frameworks and expanding the Board’s geographic aperture beyond the Middle East.
Beyond the Abraham Accords countries, some European leaders lauded President Trump’s firm resolve in the face of the enemy. Many countries- Spain being the notable exception to face trade-based consequences, joined in firmly condemning Tehran’s actions. The first foreign leader President Trump met after launching Operation Epic Fury was German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Germany is the EU’s largest power, and meeting its chancellor first underscored Trump’s intent to frame the Iran operation within a transatlantic context.
France, together with Germany and the United Kingdom denounced Iranian missile and drone strikes across the region and urged Iran to stop “indiscriminate military strikes”, which actually reached even dozens of civilians across the region. They reiterated long‑standing demands: ending Iran’s nuclear program, curbing missile development, and halting destabilizing regional activities.
The operations, especially in their second round, have gathered an unprecedented amount of support. In Israel, Yair Lapid stated on X he fully agrees with Prime Minister Netanyahu on every step taken to counter Iran. In France, Marine Le Pen expressed for the first time her clear support to the President of the French Republic, in a recent televised interview, mentioning the French diaspora in America and Israel and French military bases in other parts of the world as part of a vital French interest to defend and support.
“The Board of Peace is designed as the counter‑architecture to this model. Its purpose is to rebuild the economic, infrastructural, and administrative space that Iran’s proxies spent decades degrading. Where Iran used tunnels, militias, and covert networks, the Board uses investment corridors, governance capacity‑building, and multi-regional coordination.”
III. Iran’s Proxy System: the Region’s Destabilizing Engine
Iran’s regional malveillant activity has long rested on a dispersed and a role-distributed proxy network, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and a constellation of militias in Iraq and Syria. Into this familiar map of destabilization, a new and consequential development emerged in June 2025, when Republican Congressman Joe Wilson publicly situated the Polisario Front within Iran’s broader proxy ecosystem. His remarks catalyzed a bipartisan legislative push to designate Polisario as a foreign terrorist organization, marking a new important step in counterterrorism. In his official statement, he described Polisario as a “Marxist militia backed by Iran, Hezbollah” adding that it serves as “a strategic outpost for Tehran in Africa and destabilizing the Kingdom of Morocco.”
These five groups function as a destabilization engine, eroding state sovereignty, hollowing out infrastructure, and embedding parallel so-called governance structures. Iran-led terror activities have increasingly extended beyond the Middle East, drawing heightened concern from U.S. officials and international observers. These developments have been cited as part of a broader pattern of transnational plots attributed to Tehran’s security apparatus. On March 4th, one day after First Lady Melania Trump presided over the United Nations Security Council, as the U.S. assumed its presidency, Ambassador Mike Waltz reminded on X that “in addition to plotting to kill @Potus, he’s - the eliminated Khomeini- had also plotted to assassinate former cabinet officials, ambassadors, and activists - on American soil. Good riddance”.
The Board of Peace is designed as the counter‑architecture to this model. Its purpose is to rebuild the economic, infrastructural, and administrative space that Iran’s proxies spent decades degrading. Where Iran used tunnels, militias, and covert networks, the Board uses investment corridors, governance capacity‑building, and multi-regional coordination.
“Through the Board, Abraham Accords countries can provide policy recommendations and share their best practices from 2020 onward, especially from when they had to face proxy actors on numerous occasions… The Board’s theory of peace is fundamentally economic, a coherent approach with the master of the art of the deal’s background : stability emerges when infrastructure, energy systems, and investment flows are treated as strategic instruments rather than technical afterthoughts.”
IV. Institutional Design and regional Architecture
The United States anchors the Board’s legitimacy and operational coherence. Created under a U.N. mandate and backed by more than $7 billion in commitments, the Board of Peace is supported by Morocco, the UAE, Bahrain, and other states aligned with the logic of the Abraham Accords. Its inaugural mandate in Gaza is not a reconstruction project in the traditional sense; it is a pilot model for a new form of post‑conflict governance that integrates development, finance, energy and infrastructure planning, cross‑regional diplomacy and security‑adjacent economic stabilization.
Through the Board, Abraham Accords countries can provide policy recommendations and share their best practices from 2020 onward, especially from when they had to face proxy actors on numerous occasions. They should together present and submit to the Board an updated Negev Forum joint statement condemning by name the various Iranian proxies, including polisario, labeling them as FTOs. They can include their collective answer to the recent Iranian attacks. While the UAE and Bahrain were the only direct target in these attacks, Morocco can lead the statement given its long diplomatic tradition and security expertise in global CT and CVE, including it co-chairmanship of successive GCTF Forums and hosting the Global Coalition’s first Ministerial in Africa, along with Interpol’s GA.
The Board’s theory of peace is fundamentally economic, a coherent approach with the master of the art of the deal’s background : stability emerges when infrastructure, energy systems, and investment flows are treated as strategic instruments rather than technical afterthoughts.
“While not formally part of the Abraham Accords, the Board shares their conceptual lineage. Both frameworks prioritize multilateral‑based cooperation. They elevate economic incentives over ideological alignment … The Board represents the institutionalization of the diplomatic breakthroughs achieved under Trump, moving from normalization agreements to a standing governance mechanism capable of administering peace.”
V. The Board of Peace: a Structural Extension of the Abraham Accords
While not formally part of the Abraham Accords, the Board shares their conceptual lineage. Both frameworks prioritize multilateral‑based cooperation. They elevate economic incentives over ideological alignment, such as in the I2U2 dynamic, one of the newer frameworks that followed the Accords. Additionally, the Board and the Abraham Accords rely on U.S. leadership and convening power and both position Israel and Morocco as pivotal actors.
Washington could establish a Peace Infrastructure Command cell inside the National Security Council to track the Board of Peace’s projects with the same granularity as military operations. It could also codify a deterrence‑to‑development doctrine, alias Trump Doctrine of Peace through Strength, in U.S. strategy documents, such as the National Security Strategy Report while depicting the two models Iran/Gaza and making the Board a template for future theaters.
Morocco and Israel can provide an added value to the Board from an intelligence and interfaith dialogue perspective. His Majesty the King was lauded by the UNSG as an interfaith Dialogue Champion. Morocco’s expertise combining especially interfaith with CVE has been praised worldwide, thanks to the sustained effort by the heads of DGED-DGSN, Mohammed Yassine Mansouri and Abdellatif Hammouchi, leading Morocco to be considered in 2017, as a Stable Security Exporting Partner, by the U.S. State Department’s Country Report on Counterterror.
Washington and Jerusalem could build a Joint proxy-risk geoeconomic map, combining Israeli intelligence with U.S. financial and trade data, while using this map to prioritize Board investments in areas where economic stabilization most directly undermines proxy recruitment and logistics.
For Morocco and Abraham Accords partners, it would be interesting to launch an Atlantic–Levant Corridor linking Moroccan ports, Gulf capital, and Israeli technology, which may position Morocco as the western hub of the Board, extending its model into the Sahel and Atlantic Africa, by sharing the best practices and convincing more members to join the Abraham Accords.
The UAE and Bahrain could play a critical role by creating a Board‑aligned investment vehicle pooling capital, together with Morocco’s CFC or another structure, making members’ participation a pathway for future normalization, offering economic dividends to states considering joining the Accords. The Abraham Accords countries could deploy a rapid‑response governance team that would follow up on the agreements and the proposals to the Board.
In this vein, the Board represents the institutionalization of the diplomatic breakthroughs achieved under Trump, moving from normalization agreements to a standing governance mechanism capable of administering peace.
The Operations launch coincided with Purim, the Jewish commemoration of deliverance from ancient Persia. They became a newer foundation to the Board values. The symbolism is striking: a modern coalition, funded by Arab states, led by the United States, and operationalized by Israel, emerges to stabilize a region destabilized by the contemporary heirs of Persian imperial ambition. The Board becomes a geopolitical “Purimspiel”, where the actors are real.
With Iranian proxies weakened and a new governance architecture in place, the next phase may unfold with the brisk tempo of a familiar historical precedent such as the six day war, this time with the help of further Abraham Accords countries. If the region insists on replaying old scripts, the international community may at least update the choreography.
“At least on the Iranian issue, the UN has indirectly cooperated with the “Board’s Board members”… The regime has never been so diplomatically isolated.”
VII. Is the Board another UN?
A central question emerging from the Board’s consolidation is whether it represents a parallel governance architecture to the United Nations or a corrective mechanism designed to compensate for the UN’s structural limitations in dealing with proxy‑driven conflicts. One thing is sure: the threat or the fear of being overshadowed by the Board on this critical issue has been felt in few media comments. The Negev Forum itself, if it becomes genuinely operational, could build the potential of becoming an alternative to the UN, however at this stage, it is still too early to predict even when it will succeed in gathering its members for the second summit. The Board is also not conceived as a replacement for the UN; rather, it functions as a specialized, mission‑driven consortium capable of acting where the UN’s consensus‑based model routinely stalls. In practice, the UN’s role becomes twofold: first, to provide international legitimacy, monitoring capacity, and humanitarian coordination; second, to cooperate with the Board in areas where rapid, security‑centric decision‑making is essential but politically impossible within the UN framework.
At least on the Iranian issue, the UN has indirectly cooperated with the “Board’s Board members”. The UNSC has adopted a Bahrain-led resolution with no “against”. Ambassador Waltz commended this new UN spirit on X, stating that “every Gulf Arab nation PLUS 135 co-sponsors (a UN record) has now formally condemned Iran. The regime has never been so diplomatically isolated.”
The United Nations’ DPO, long anchored in conventional frameworks and recurrent cycles of reconstruction, has been surpassed by Trump’s vision with a more proactive and strategically integrated institutional model. The U.S. President’s vision introduced an innovative and outside the outdated box approach where emphasis has shifted toward diplomatic architecture, economic stabilization, and governance mechanisms rather than direct reconstruction efforts deployment.
The Board’s comparative advantage lies in its ability to integrate military deterrence, economic stabilization, and regional diplomatic alignment, three domains in which the UN has struggled to produce enforceable outcomes. If the UN adapts by partnering with the Board rather than resisting it, the result could be a hybrid governance model: UN legitimacy paired with Board operational agility, creating a more resilient architecture for managing post‑proxy regional order.
Chaimae Bouazzaoui is Morocco’s first woman diplomat in Israel and an ambassador at Bar-Ilan University. In Israel, she served as a political counsellor and co-founding team member at the Moroccan Liaison Office in Tel Aviv from 2021 to the end of August 2023. She is a member of MENA2050 and a research fellow on the Abraham Accords Unit. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Moroccan Youth for Peace. As a former diplomat, she served as Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita, on the U.S. Moroccan bilateral and multilateral cooperation. She served at the United Nations as a political counsellor on American Affairs at the UNSC and the Fifth Committee at the UNGA.