For generations, the Middle East has been locked in a series of bloody struggles which pit ordinary people against one another. In 2020, the United States brokered a historic peace deal, creating the first public normalization of relations between Israelis and Arabs since the Israel-Jordan treaty in 1994. The agreement created peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Later, Sudan and Morocco also normalized relations. The accords were the result of long-term behind-the-scenes work by Ambassador David M. Friedman, a story which he tells for the first time in Sledgehammer. In the past, the accepted wisdom on Middle Eastern diplomacy was that detailed knowledge of history and culture was necessary to negotiate the smallest thing. But in truth, both sides used that expectation to stall and hope for a better deal down the road. Friedman realized that a new future was possible, and that the United States must either find a way to be a part of it or lose out forever.