President Trump on Thursday added a condition to the U.S.-Saudi civilian nuclear cooperation agreement his Energy Department signed a day earlier, saying the pact will not take effect unless Riyadh joins the Abraham Accords and normalizes relations with Israel.
The reversal, delivered on Truth Social rather than in a formal statement, undoes the most consequential concession in Wednesday's deal — the dropping of a longstanding U.S. demand that Saudi recognition of Israel accompany any nuclear cooperation — and reinstates a linkage Riyadh has said it will not accept without a clear path to Palestinian statehood. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected that path as untenable for his country's security.
What Trump said
"The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!)... which pertains only to non-military use... will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords," Trump wrote Thursday. Wednesday's agreement, according to a person familiar with the text who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, could have permitted a uranium-enrichment facility on Saudi soil after a joint U.S.-Saudi study — a first for a U.S. "123 agreement." Neither the Energy Department nor the Saudi government mentioned any Israel condition when the pact was announced.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked why the condition was absent from the initial announcement, said Trump was the "final dealmaker" and had raised the accords with Saudi leaders "on numerous occasions." "He has said if they don't join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off," Leavitt said.
Riyadh's silence
The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment. The kingdom has said normalization with Israel requires the establishment of a Palestinian state, a position that predates the current war in Gaza. Netanyahu's office called the prospect of Saudi accession to the accords "an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East"; the statement did not mention the nuclear deal.
In Manila
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, traveling in the Philippine capital, framed the reworked pact as a commercial win. "We're not the only show in town, but we're the best show in town," Rubio told reporters, arguing the deal would lock in American firms ahead of Chinese, French, South Korean and Russian competitors. Rubio, as a Republican senator from Florida, backed a 2018 bill to require Congress to approve any 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia; Democrats reintroduced the measure in March, and it has not passed.
Skeptics remain
Nonproliferation experts stayed wary even after the enrichment retreat. Rosemary Kelanic, Middle East program director at the Defense Priorities think tank, told the BBC that allowing enrichment on Saudi soil would be "quite shocking." "The US has never done that before. We have never helped another country enrich on their own soil," she said. Former Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that "Every military nuclear program begins with a civilian one." The pact does not include the International Atomic Energy Agency's "additional protocol," which would permit expanded monitoring, inspections and verification.
No Saudi official had responded publicly to Trump's reversal by press time, and the wire reports driving Thursday's coverage carried no direct account of Riyadh's calculation. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told CBS News in 2018 that his kingdom would not pursue a nuclear weapon but would "follow suit as soon as possible" if Iran built one — a reminder that the linkage among the accords, the nuclear file and Iran's own program is tighter than Thursday's post acknowledged.
The 30-year 123 agreement and its bilateral safeguards pact, signed Wednesday by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman, still head to Congress for review under the Atomic Energy Act.