On his final full day in office, President Donald Trump chose to honor Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his country’s normalization of ties with Israel and its role in hosting a June 2019 economic conference to showcase his Middle East peace plan.
Last week, Trump conferred the rare Legion of Merit, Degree Chief Commander on King Mohammed VI of Morocco for his role in restoring diplomatic ties with Israel.
The Legion of Merit is a military award created to honor leaders of Allied nations during World War II. It has not been awarded to anyone since, until it was restored to service last month by Trump, who employed the award to honor the prime ministers of Australia, India and Japan.
This week on his final full day in office, Trump bestowed the Legion of Merit, Degree Chief Commander on the King of Bahrain, saying the monarch showed “extraordinary courage and leadership through his support of the Vision for Peace and his decision to establish full diplomatic relations with the State of Israel,” according to the official Bahrain News Agency.
“King Hamad has challenged old assumptions about the possibility for peace in the region, and in doing so, positively reshaped the landscape of the Middle East for generations,” the president added.
Trump was directly responsible for the development of the Abraham Accords, in which four Arab nations signed peace accords with the State of Israel in agreements brokered by President Trump and his “peace team.”