Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an interview with National Review during one of the final stops of his extended, post-election foreign trip, voiced confidence that "many countries" will make the decision to normalize ties with Israel in the near future.

"I’m very confident that they’ll make this [choice] . . . in the coming weeks and months ahead," Pompeo said.

He made the prediction Sunday on the sidelines of his stop in Abu Dhabi, where he met a day earlier with Emirati crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the first Arab leader to sign one of the recent normalization agreements, which span tourism, trade, and culture, in addition to full diplomatic relations. Bahrain and Sudan joined the agreements, called the Abraham Accords, soon thereafter.

Already, the wheels of the administration's Mideast project are turning again. Later on Sunday, Pompeo traveled to the Saudi Arabian city of Neom, where he met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A State Department readout did not indicate that they discussed the recent normalization agreements, but according to the Wall Street Journal, citing Hebrew-language media reports and original reporting, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined them.

"I’m confident there’ll be more nations that will follow," Pompeo told NR hours earlier, during the sit-down interview in the Emirati capital. "The reason I’m confident, by the way, is because it's the right thing for those countries to do."

Pompeo's ten-day trip unfolded to the backdrop of domestic political turmoil and effectively served as a Trump administration farewell tour and foreign-policy victory lap. Visits to Middle Eastern countries highlighted what officials regard as one of the crowning diplomatic achievements of the past four years.

In his NR interview, Pompeo spoke to the strategic sea change that the administration contends made all this possible.

According to the secretary of state, it took the widespread acknowledgement of three factors to reach the Abraham Accords. In addition to acknowledgement of the central threat posed by Iran and Israel's established place in the region, he said, it also required recognizing that while resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is important, "we can't stand by as we have for 40 years and allow that conflict to be the precondition for further enhancement of peace and stability."

Pompeo summed up: "We broke glass. We said we're not going to do that."

Amid the widespread focus on President Trump's efforts to contest the election results back home, Pompeo's travels in the Middle East did not avoid controversy. Critics charged that he staged provocative photo ops — such as one at an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and another in the Golan Heights, areas internationally regarded as Palestinian and Syrian territory, respectively — for an eventual presidential run. But the Trump administration has recognized Israeli sovereignty over Golan and withdrawn a State Department legal document calling the West Bank settlements illegal, as part of the suite of policies it has advanced to support Israel and clamp down on Iran's activities in the region.

Another way to view Pompeo's recent travels is as an attempt to shore up confidence in U.S. leadership in the region as Joe Biden prepares to take office in January.

Although leaders of the Middle Eastern nations that Pompeo visited this month — Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia — have already congratulated the former vice president on his victory, they are also worried by his campaign-trail promises to reenter the Iran deal. (Pompeo also met the emir and foreign minister of Qatar, which also congratulated Biden but has closer ties to Iran than the other Gulf states.) Biden has pledged that he would reenter the Obama-era agreement from which Trump withdrew in 2018 if Tehran stopped violating its terms.

There's also the question of whether the incoming administration shares the assessment advanced by the United States, Israel, and now the Gulf states that the Israeli–Palestinian peace process can no longer stand as a prerequisite for a broader peace in the region, and whether it would back Israel to the extent that the Trump administration has.

When Pompeo went to Jerusalem for meetings and joint statements with Israeli officials and the Bahraini foreign minister last week, Netanyahu said, "Frankly, this day would not have happened, these Abraham Accords would not have been signed, without President Trump's crucial support and leadership."

Still, Biden's decision to nominate Tony Blinken, a former top State Department official in the Obama administration, as Pompeo's successor, might ease some of those worries. Blinken is seen as supportive of strong U.S.–Israel ties.

In any case, the regional dynamics unleashed by the Trump administration's diplomacy over the past four years do not seem to be dissipating anytime soon. Noting Israel's previous ties with Gulf states, skepticism of Iran, and the desire for economic cooperation, a senior State Department official told reporters traveling with Pompeo that "the roots are present, so I don't think these are going to go away."

"I think that we play an important role in helping to strengthen that, these ties, bring them along," said the official. "But the inclination is already there."

Asked on Sunday if he had a message for Biden and other Democrats who have called for returning to the Iran deal, Pompeo demurred. He's also played his cards close to the vest regarding the election itself, since staking out his position that the transition begins with Electoral College certification of the results in December.

He instead offered a message to people "all across America," telling National Review, "we have now demonstrated that the false choice that was put to the American people, that we either do the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] or we go to war, was a false choice." The JCPOA is also known as the Iran nuclear deal.

Pompeo also declined to offer specifics on the next countries that might join the Abraham Accords and the timeline on which they'd do it, deferring to those countries' internal deliberations as sovereign nations and emphasizing a monumental shift in attitudes toward Middle East peace.

"The central understanding for so long was that without resolving the conflict with the Palestinians, we can’t recognize Israel and the right of Israel to exist," he told National Review. "You’ll find very few who continue to hold to that vision."