The Mideast Is Baffled by Trump’s Call to Expand Abraham Accords

​

“President Trump proposed a deal to end the war with Iran, contingent on Middle Eastern and South Asian countries joining the Abraham Accords and recognizing Israel. However, analysts find the proposal puzzling, as many of the countries already have relations with Israel or are unlikely to establish them. The proposal also seems disconnected from the ongoing peace negotiations with Iran and the broader political dynamics in the region.

​

The president said more countries should be required to recognize Israel as part of a deal to end the war with Iran. Analysts say the chances of that happening are close to zero.

May 28, 2026, 5:21 a.m. ET

President Trump with leaders from Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the signing of the Abraham Accords in Washington in 2020.Doug Mills/The New York Times

The social media post by President Trump made it sound straightforward. The United States would orchestrate a deal to end the war with Iran and, in exchange, a slew of countries across the Middle East and South Asia would join an agreement, called the Abraham Accords, establishing relations with Israel.

In fact, he said, that “should be mandatory.” But half of the countries he named — such as Egypt, Jordan and Turkey — already have relations with Israel. And the other half — including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan — have no interestin establishing them anytime soon.

As a result, the meandering ultimatum that Mr. Trump shared on Monday was met with a mix of silence and bemusement across the Middle East. Regional analysts said they were not even sure that they understood the rationale behind his proposal. Why would ending the war, which the United States and Israel initiated by bombing Iran on Feb. 28, provide an incentive to recognize Israel for countries like Qatar, which had lobbied desperately to prevent the war in the first place?

“It’s just bizarre,” said Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “What’s the connection between a deal with Iran and that? I’m honestly puzzled.”

Two Western diplomats in the region said that no one was really taking the idea seriously. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomacy.

Asked to explain the connection between peace negotiations with Iran and expanding the Abraham Accords, a White House spokeswoman did not answer directly. Instead, she referred to remarks made by Mr. Trump on Wednesday, when he suggested that U.S. agreement on a deal with Iran could be made contingent upon countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar agreeing to recognize Israel.

“I think those countries owe it to us,” he said. “I’m not sure we should make the deal, if they don’t sign.”

The Saudi and Qatari governments did not respond to requests for comment.

A strike on an apartment building in Gaza City this month. The war has left an association with Israel even less politically popular in Arab nations.Saher Alghorra for The New York Times

Under the Abraham Accords — a deal brokered by the first Trump administration in 2020 — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. A wide range of American politicians have portrayed the pact as a major diplomatic achievement, and have frequently referred to the accords as a “peace deal.”

Scholars from the region say that is merely a turn of phrase, belying the fact that there has never been a war between Israel and Bahrain or the Emirates. In effect, the deals bypassed the central conflict — between Israel and the Palestinians — declaring harmony between parties that were not fighting.

Since then, the Abraham Accords have created opportunities for expanded trade, security cooperation and tourism between the countries that signed them. The Emirates, the Arab architect of the accords, has grown especially close to Israel. But the accords did not usher in a new era of regional peace — far from it — and the Emirates’ warm ties with Israel have increasingly made it an outlier in the Middle East.

For Israel, the crowning of the Abraham Accords would be the normalization of diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, the largest Arab economy and home to Islam’s holiest sites. Saudi Arabia does not formally recognize Israel, although successive U.S. administrations have made it their goal to change that.

Few consider that a possibility now. Over the past couple of years, Saudi officials have consistently predicated ties with Israel on the creation of an independent state for Palestinians. Israel’s current government — the most right-wing in the country’s history — vehemently opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state and is unwilling to even talk of a pathway to one.

“Saudi Arabia will not be rushed into a historic decision that ignores Palestinian statehood,” said Salman al-Ansari, a Saudi political analyst. “Saudi Arabia’s commitment to a two-state solution is not a slogan, and it is not a bargaining chip.”

Mr. Trump’s language implied that he was giving an order, not making a request.

“It should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and everybody else should follow suit,” he said. “If they don’t, they should not be part of this Deal in that it shows bad intention.”

Perhaps even Iran — Israel’s archenemy — could join the Abraham Accords, Mr. Trump mused.

“Wow, now that would be something special!” he wrote.

Soon after, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who had recently slammed the potential deal with Iran, wrote his own post on social media calling it a “simply brilliant” idea to link the deal with the expansion of the Abraham Accords.

“I expect our Arab allies to embrace this,” he wrote.

If taken at face value, those statements would seem to indicate an ignorance of political dynamics in the Middle East, analysts said. An association with Israel — never popular among Arab populations — has become even more toxic for many governments in the Middle East as a result of the devastating wars that Israel has waged in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023.

The more that American officials push for normalization as an imposition rather than as part of a mutually beneficial deal, “the more unpalatable it becomes,” said Abdulaziz Alghashian, a Saudi scholar and senior nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum, a research organization.

Under the Biden administration, the Saudi crown prince had been seeking substantial incentives from the United States in exchange for establishing ties with Israel, including access to American nuclear technology and a U.S.-Saudi defense pact.

The extent to which Mr. Trump’s mandate came across as a complete non sequitur in the Middle East made Mr. Alghashian think that the Abraham Accords were possibly “the only clear strategy the U.S. has in the region,” he said.

A deal with Iran appears shaky at best, and fighting has continued to flare as diplomats have negotiated the details. In Israel, Mr. Trump’s linkage between that deal and an expansion of the Abraham Accords has been largely met by baffled silence.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has not reacted publicly to Mr. Trump’s pronouncement. Analysts have said that the phased deal with Iran the president has proposed would most likely be hard for Mr. Netanyahu to swallow. If the bid to include an expansion of the Abraham Accords were meant as some kind of sweetener, the Israeli prime minister was not letting on.

Asked about the Abraham Accords becoming part of any Iran deal, or if Mr. Netanyahu had discussed this issue with Mr. Trump, the Israeli government responded with a statement saying only that “Israel is keen on expanding the circle of peace, which will be most beneficial to all signatories of the Abraham Accords.”

With Israeli elections expected this fall, and Mr. Netanyahu’s political future on the line, the prospect of Saudi Arabia or other Muslim-majority states handing him such a prize appear even more remote.

“Those countries won’t take a step before the elections in Israel and before seeing what the deal with Iran yields,” Mr. Guzansky said, adding, “We are still in such a fog of war.”

Mr. Trump even suggested that Pakistan — which has mediated between the United States and Iran to end the war — should join the accords.

In Pakistan, one of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority countries, officials and analysts greeted that call with a flat no. Pakistan does not recognize Israel, and its passports explicitly state that holders are barred from traveling there.

Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, said on local television that joining the accords would clash with the country’s “fundamental ideologies.” 

Mr. Trump’s statement might have been an attempt to please parts of his domestic audience — such as Iran hawks who view the potential deal with the Iranians as a disappointment — Pakistani analysts said. They called the proposal a distraction from the peace negotiations between the United States and Iran.

“Trump may be trying to divert attention with his Abraham Accords statement, but it is a poor effort at that,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States and the United Nations.

In the end, Mr. Trump appeared to give himself an offramp — raising questions about why he had made the proposal in the first place.

“It may be possible,” he wrote in the post, that some of the countries he named have acceptable reasons for not recognizing Israel, he said.

But the rest of the countries, he said, should be ready to join in — making his settlement with Iran “a far more Historic Event than it would, otherwise, be.”

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Adam Rasgon from Tel Aviv.

Vivian Nereim is the lead reporter for The Times covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. She is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.

Elian Peltier is The Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, based in Islamabad.”

 

Why Trump Keeps Getting Rolled in Negotiations

​

“Trump’s reputation for dealmaking is contradicted by his poor negotiation skills, as demonstrated by his dealings with North Korea, Russia, China, and now Iran. Despite claiming to be close to a deal with Iran, Trump’s proposed agreement lacks substance and has faced criticism from his own allies.

​

The president will try to spin any Iran deal he makes, but he’s ill-equipped to gain real concessions.

David A. GrahamMay 26, 2026, 5:11 PM ET

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Donald Trump’s reputation and political career were built on his dealmaking prowess, yet the president keeps demonstrating that he is a terrible negotiator.

Repeatedly over the past nine years, Trump has gotten rolled by counterparts during high-stakes exchanges. North Korea, Russia, Russia again, China, and China again have gotten the better of the United States. Trump has had to slink back to Washington without much to show except empty talk about friendship with whatever dictator has just run circles around him. He’s had some success in brokering agreements when acting as a third party (though not nearly as much as he pretends) but much less luck when his own government is a participant. The one glaring exception came when he was effectively negotiating with himself, getting his own administration to set up a $1.8 billion slush fund for his political allies.

The newest example of Trump’s artlessness is Iran. Let’s review the past few days: Trump posted on Saturday that he was close to striking a deal with Tehran that would end the war he started earlier this year and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. As the outlines of the agreement began to emerge, it looked both incomplete and bad: Trump had postponed discussing the hardest issues—matters, such as nuclear weapons, that led him to go to war—in exchange for opening the strait, which was open before Trump started the war. Hawkish Trump allies promptly criticized the deal, and despite histrionic pushback from Trump aides, the president had begun backing off claims of an imminent agreement by Sunday. “If I make a deal with Iran, it will be a good and proper one, not like the one made by Obama,” he posted. “Our deal is the exact opposite, but nobody has seen it, or knows what it is. It isn’t even fully negotiated yet.” Yesterday, in a sign that a deal might not be near at all, the U.S. military conducted what it called “self-defense strikes” against Iranian targets—directly contradicting the administration’s previous claims about having wiped out any threats to the United States in Iran.“

 

‘Makes no sense’: experts doubt pause in US arms sale to Taiwan is due to Iran war

​

“Experts doubt the Trump administration’s justification for pausing a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, citing the low likelihood of a connection to the Iran conflict. The arms package, which could take years to deliver, is unrelated to the current conflict, and any delays could put Taiwan in a difficult position. Trump’s suggestion of using Taiwan arms sales as a negotiating chip with China also raises concerns about US support for the island.

​

While approval is due soon for $14bn deal, actual deliveries to Taiwan are years away – making ‘Operation Epic Fury’ in the Gulf an unlikely cause

Alastair McCready and Yu-chen Li in Taipei

Experts have questioned the Trump administration’s justification for pausing weapons sales to Taiwan, saying the transfers are unconnected to the Iran war. Photograph: I-Hwa Cheng/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s war against Iran should have no impact on arms sales to Taiwan, experts have said, after a US official suggested a pause in the delivery of a key weapons package was due to the Gulf conflict.

Analysts told the Guardian that a $14bn arms package left in limbo after Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping could take up to six years to process, and there was a “low likelihood” of any true connection between events in Iran and weapons delivery to Taiwan.

Uncertainty over Washington’s support for the island democracy re-emerged after Trump suggested he could use arms sales to Taiwan as a “negotiating chip” in future talks with Beijing.

Comments by Washington’s acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, at a congressional hearing on Thursday provoked further alarm in Taipei after he suggested that the weapons package awaiting Trump’s sign off for months had been paused.

“Right now we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury [the Iran war],” he said. “We’re just making sure we have everything, then the foreign military sales will continue when the administration deems necessary.”

The US has reportedly drained its missile stockpiles since launching its increasingly intractable war against Iran on 28 February.

Cao’s justification for the pause “makes no sense”, according to Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council and a senior adviser at strategic consultancy group Bower Group Asia.

There is a “very very low likelihood” that there is any true connection between events in Iran and weapons delivery to Taiwan, Hammond-Chambers said, adding that the weapons deals that Trump is considering at the moment “don’t get delivered for anywhere from three to six years”.

“If he sends those congressional notifications by the end of June, you’re talking about another six to 12 months before the contract is signed, and then the clock starts on delivery. So we’re really into the 2030s [by the time Taiwan’s weapons are delivered],” he said.

Over the weekend, Reuters reported comments from an unnamed US official that the military had “more than enough munitions, ammo, and stockpiles to serve all of President Trump’s strategic goals and beyond”, and that the pause in sales to Taiwan was “unrelated to the war with Iran”.

China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province, despite never having ruled it, and strongly opposes Washington’s arms sales to the island democracy. US law dictates that Washington should supply Taiwan with defensive materials in order for the island to maintain a “sufficient self-defense capability”.

Xi told Trump in Beijing this month that the Taiwan issue was “the most important issue in China-US relations,” according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement. Trump has said he made no commitments about Taiwan during the meeting with Xi, but his statements since have cast doubt over Washington’s support.

Trump’s suggestion he could use Taiwan arms sales as a bargaining chip would violate Washington’s longstanding policy that it does not discuss the issue with Beijing.

The US president’s comment last week that he may speak directly with Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, was another break from decades of diplomatic protocol. No sitting US president has spoken to a Taiwanese president since 1979, when Washington shifted diplomatic recognition to Beijing, and it would enrage China if the call were to take place.

On Monday, five lawmakers from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party, joined by Peter Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation, a thinktank, held a press conference addressing Taiwan-US relations in the wake of the Xi-Trump summit. There, DPP legislator Ngalim Tiunn reiterated that “Taiwan’s communication channels with the US remain open and smooth”.

Mattis said he also thought Cao’s comments were not accurate, saying there was “no way” in which arms packages to Taiwan that had already been decided and notified to the US Congress could be affected by the Iran conflict.

“Whatever has been said is somebody misspeaking and not necessarily understanding the technical details of how US arms sales work,” he said. “I think these are separate issues and should be treated differently.”

Hammond-Chambers said that if Trump approved the sales “in the next four to six weeks” then uncertainty about US support for Taipei “mostly goes away”.

But if delays were to drag on into the autumn – when Trump is set to host Xi in Washington, before another two potential meetings at the Apec summit in China in November and the G20 summit in Miami in December – then it “puts Taiwan in a terrible position”.

The White House and China’s Taiwan Affairs Office were approached for comment.”

 

Middle East crisis live: Iran’s foreign ministry says US broke ceasefire with overnight strikes

​

“Iran accused the US of violating a ceasefire with overnight strikes in Hormozgan, near the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed to have shot down a US drone and fired at a fighter jet. The strikes, along with an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, contributed to rising oil prices and heightened regional tensions.

​

The US military said it carried out strikes on Monday against targets including boats attempting to lay mines and missile launch sites

Vessels anchored at the Strait of Hormuz Photograph: Reuters

30m ago09.00 EDT

Afternoon summary

Iran’s foreign ministry has accused the US of violating the ceasefire after overnight strikes by the US military on targets in the southern coastal province of Hormozgan, next to the strait of Hormuz.

Here’s a round-up of the other key events so far today:

• Iranian supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said on his Telegram channel that Gulf powers will no longer be a shield for US bases and the US will no longer have a safe haven in the region. The post followe overnight attacks on Iran by the US, testing the ceasefire agreed in April.

• Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it reserved the “legitimate and definite” right to retaliate against any ceasefire violations by the US. It added that its air defence units had shot down a US MQ-9 drone and fired at a fighter jet that had entered Iranian airspace.

• Brent crude oil rose 3% on Tuesday after the news of the US strikes on Iran. The strikes added to uncertainty about whether a deal will be imminently reached to end the war and open up shipping flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

• An Israeli airstrike on a village in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley killed 12 people, AP reports, citing the country’s state-run National News Agency. Rescue workers said a dozen bodies were pulled out of the rubble following an intense wave of overnight strikes targeting swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon.

• Israel’s military has warned residents of the southern Lebanese town of Nabatieh to leave ahead of possible airstrikes, Reuters reports. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel would escalate strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as a US official said the militia had ignored warnings to halt firing at Israel.

• United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said that a tanker had reported an external explosion on the vessel’s port side, 60 nautical miles off Oman’s capital Muscat. In a post on X, UKMTO said the vessel and its crew were safe, although the tanker reported that some bunker fuel was discharged into the sea. UKMTO urged vessels to transit with caution and report suspicious activity.

I’m clocking off, but my colleague Tom Ambrose will continue to bring you the latest updates from the crisis in the Middle East.

08.47 EDT

Iran’s judiciary has suspended a presidential body that had ordered the restoration of internet access, AFP reports.

Iranian authorities first imposed sweeping internet restrictions during large-scale anti-government protests that peaked in early January, before shutting access down again on 28 February at the start of the war.

The judicial decision targeted the “Special Headquarters for Organising and Governing the Country’s Cyberspace”, a body formed on 12 May by president Masoud Pezeshkian.

The body had on Monday reached a decision to “restore the internet” in Iran, according to government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani, after local media reported that Pezeshkian had decreed the measure.

In recent weeks, Iran introduced a tiered internet system known as “Pro Internet”, which, according to Iranian media, granted broader access to selected groups of professionals for higher fees.

By 5 April, internet monitor NetBlocks said the shutdown imposed after the outbreak of war was “the longest nation-scale internet shutdown on record in any country”.

 

Pope Leo Warns of Risks From A.I. in 42,300-Word Encyclical

​

“Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” warns of the risks posed by artificial intelligence to human dignity and agency. He calls for government regulation of A.I. development, protection and retraining for workers, and safeguards to ensure human responsibility for decisions involving A.I. weapons. The encyclical emphasizes the importance of retaining a fundamental social role for all humans and highlights the need for ethical considerations in A.I. development.

​

The document marks a powerful foray by the leader of the Roman Catholic Church into the debate about the misuse or overuse of artificial intelligence.

May 25, 2026Updated 11:14 a.m. ET

Pope Leo Warns of A.I. Risks in His First Papal Encyclical

Pope Leo XIV presented his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” in which he outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age when technology threatens to replace people in many professional and social roles.Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Pope Leo XIV on Monday set out a sweeping vision for corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence, warning leaders to safeguard humanity from A.I.’s most disruptive effects.

Leo’s declaration came in the form of a papal encyclical, an open letter to “all people of good will” that ran to roughly 42,300 words in its English version. It outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a major A.I. developer, in a symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds.

While emphasizing that “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he wrote that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.”

Among other things, Leo called for:

• government regulation of the private companies that are driving the development of A.I.

• protection and retraining for workers whose jobs are threatened

• education to help students think critically about the technology

• action to protect children from violent, hypersexualized or fake information online that is often generated by A.I.

• safeguards to ensure that humans, not artificial intelligence, remain responsible for all decisions regarding the use of weapons.

Above all he emphasized the importance of retaining a fundamental social role for all human beings. “A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity,” he wrote.

“This creates a paradox of material progress and anthropological regression that undermines the foundations of a just and stable social peace,” he added.

Leo, presenting the encyclical to a packed hall at the Vatican, said his views had been shaped by conversations with scientists, engineers and political leaders. He singled out Mr. Olah, with whom he pledged to work “to find a way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence.”

“What a great sign of hope it is that in our differences we can listen to one another,” Leo said.

Mr. Olah, who is not Catholic, praised the pope’s initiative, acknowledging that companies like his own need moral guidance to avoid being swayed by “a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.”

“We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend,” Mr. Olah added.

“Today is just the beginning — the start of a long collaboration between those of us who are building this and those who can see what we, from the inside, cannot,” Mr. Olah said. Both men spoke, along with a panel of theologians and Vatican officials, before an audience of cardinals, computer scientists, journalists and diplomats including Brian Burch, the United States ambassador to the Holy See.

Leo greeting Christopher Olah, a co-founder of the A.I. developer Anthropic, before the presentation.Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Leo had made clear his concerns with A.I. as early as his second day as pope, just over a year ago, when he told the College of Cardinals that, under his leadership, the church would address the risks that the evolving technology poses to “human dignity, justice and labor.”

He has since repeatedly spoken about A.I., including during a trip to Turkey and Lebanon, in an address to Catholic university leaders and even when celebrating the international day of mathematics. Last week, the Vatican announced it had created a commission of senior Catholic officials to discuss the challenges posed by A.I.

Pope Francis, Leo’s immediate predecessor, had also warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence and called for the ethical use of technology.

Although Leo publicly presented his encyclical on Monday, he formally signed it on May 15, the 135th anniversary of the publication of “Rerum Novarum,” — or “Of New Things” in English — a major encyclical written in 1891 by his namesake, Leo XIII.

The pope’s encyclical was timed to prompt comparisons with that earlier document, which guided Catholic teaching on how to protect workers after the technological and industrial disruptions of the 19th century.

Written amid the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, “Rerum Novarum” sought to safeguard the rights and dignity of the working class and became one of the foundational texts of modern Catholic social teaching. It called on governments to “save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money making,” even as it praised the “discoveries of science.”

In the new encyclical, titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” Leo struck a similar tone, warning of the new threat to workers posed by artificial intelligence.

Work, he wrote, is more than a way of earning income, but “a requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development and personal fulfillment.” He called for “the protection of employment opportunities and the irreplaceable role of the individual.”

The encyclical also called for imposing the “most rigorous ethical constraints” on weapons developed using artificial intelligence, continuing Leo’s — and the Vatican’s — longstanding opposition to war.

“The growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed makes war more ‘feasible’ and less subject to human control,” Leo wrote. That, he added, contradicted “the principle that armed force should be used only as a last resort in cases of legitimate self-defense.”

Leo also used the encyclical to apologize for the Vatican’s role in slavery. In a section about modern-day slavery, Leo personally apologized for the papacy’s failure to condemn earlier forms of slavery and for supporting rulers who engaged in it. An earlier pope, John Paul II, apologized in 1985 for the role of Christians in perpetuating the slave trade, but did not explicitly discuss the Vatican’s role.

Although the encyclical includes significant references to scripture and religious teachings, the document in many ways reads like a policy paper from a think tank or a lawmaker.

Leo wrote in detail, for example, of the importance of protecting children, who are particularly susceptible to the warping effects of technology.

“Psychological and psychiatric literature has documented with growing insistence how early and unsupervised exposure to digital devices and social media can negatively impact sleep, attention span, control of emotions and relationships, especially during the most vulnerable stages of life, at times with tragic consequences,” he wrote.

Scholars were divided about what effect, if any, the document would have on the technology industry, in which rival tech titans are jostling with Anthropic for dominance.

Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at Santa Clara University in Northern California, said some technology leaders “will have to take it seriously in a sense,” partly because it provides them with “a moral imperative” even as it recognized their autonomy.

The church, he said, “does not claim to supplant the responsibilities of politics or institutions, but offers itself as a foundation,” urging other institutions to “recognize and promote whatever serves the dignity of persons, the vitality of communities and the common good.”

Others said that an encyclical’s primary targets are the clergy and the faithful.

“I don’t think the ‘tech bros’ in Silicon Valley will listen that much,” said Prof. Noreen Herzfeld, director of a program on technology and ethics at St. John’s School of Theology and Seminary in Collegeville, Minn. “But I think within the church, it will be there as a reference for priests and bishops and particularly for those of us who are educating seminarians or young people.”

Priests can use the contents of the document to guide conversations with parishioners who share their concerns about the technological pressures of modern life, Professor Herzfeld said.

Josephine de La Bruyère contributed reporting from Rome.

Motoko Rich is the Times bureau chief in Rome, where she covers Italy, the Vatican and Greece.

Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.

Elizabeth Dias is The Times’s national religion correspondent, covering faith, politics and values.“