President Trump said the newly signed U.S.-Saudi civil nuclear agreement would not permit uranium enrichment on Saudi soil, a claim that conflicts with multiple reports describing the actual terms negotiators reached.
“The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!) being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The United States is not opposed to Civil (Non-Enriched) Nuclear Facilities. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Trump’s post came a day after Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed what the Department of Energy called a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement, or 123 agreement, alongside a bilateral safeguards agreement, according to the department’s official announcement. That announcement made no reference to an enrichment ban or an Abraham Accords condition.
Several outlets reported that the actual agreement signed the day before Trump’s post would allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium domestically, a significant departure from decades of U.S. nonproliferation policy that has generally required countries receiving American nuclear cooperation to forgo enrichment. According to Al Jazeera’s reporting, nonproliferation groups and lawmakers had already criticized the agreement on those grounds before Trump’s post, warning it could fuel a regional arms race and give Iran further justification for pursuing its own weapons capability.
Reuters had reported weeks earlier that the administration delinked the nuclear talks from any Israel normalization requirement altogether, and that Saudi Arabia’s energy minister had said the kingdom intended to enrich uranium and sell the resulting product, with U.S. and Saudi officials discussing a “black box” arrangement in which only American personnel would have access to a Saudi enrichment facility as a possible compromise, according to the Reuters account of the negotiations.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked why the Abraham Accords condition was absent from Wright’s original announcement of the deal. She said Trump had made clear to Gulf leaders that he wanted them to normalize relations with Israel, and that “this deal with Saudi Arabia, this energy deal, is contingent on this condition as far as the president is concerned,” adding that the administration would “continue to talk with our Saudi counterparts to get the deal finalized and hopefully see them joining the Abraham Accords very soon.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office welcomed Trump’s post, saying Saudi Arabia’s joining of the Abraham Accords “would be an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East. Peace through strength.” Saudi Arabia has not publicly responded to either the enrichment claim or the Abraham Accords condition, and the White House has said Trump had not spoken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since adding the new terms, according to reporting on the White House’s account.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was aware of the U.S.-Saudi plan but had not yet received a formal request to oversee inspections of any resulting facilities, according to Al Jazeera’s report.
Trump’s comparison of the deal to existing arrangements with Iran and the United Arab Emirates drew scrutiny given the differing histories of those two programs. The UAE’s 2009 nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S. under the Obama administration required Abu Dhabi to formally renounce uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, a nonproliferation standard sometimes referred to as the “gold standard.” Iran’s nuclear program, by contrast, has involved extensive uranium enrichment that the U.S. and Israel cited as a central justification for the ongoing war.
Under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the president must make a written determination that the finalized agreement will promote and not pose an unreasonable risk to the common defense and security before submitting it to Congress, which then has up to 90 days of continuous session to block it through a joint resolution of disapproval, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis of the process. As of Trump’s post, that formal determination and congressional transmission had not yet occurred.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board criticized the sequence of events, noting that the Biden administration had previously sought to use nuclear cooperation as leverage to secure Saudi recognition of Israel, and arguing Trump had initially signed away that leverage before attempting to reclaim it a day later through the Truth Social post.
Neither the Saudi government nor the Department of Energy has issued a public statement reconciling Trump’s description of the deal with the terms described in earlier reporting.