Political condition attached to nuclear cooperation
US President Donald Trump said a proposed civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia would be approved only if the kingdom recognized Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, AFP reported on July 22, 2026.
Trump described Saudi participation in the accords as a condition of the deal announced a day earlier. Saudi Arabia, however, had resisted Washington’s effort to secure recognition of Israel and had insisted that there must first be a pathway toward a Palestinian state. AFP said Trump’s condition therefore created uncertainty over whether the nuclear arrangement would proceed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called prospective Saudi recognition a “historic leap” for regional peace. H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, offered a more doubtful assessment, telling AFP that an attempt to force normalization on Riyadh was unlikely to work well. He questioned whether Saudi policy would reverse course after its previously stated positions.
The agreement’s text was not immediately public. If implemented, AFP reported, it could produce billions of dollars in business for US companies while providing Saudi Arabia with economic and diplomatic benefits. The proposal was due to be submitted to Congress for review.
A central area of contention was whether uranium enrichment could occur inside Saudi Arabia. The Wall Street Journal reported that one possible provision would allow US companies to construct an enrichment facility there. The US Energy Department did not mention such a provision and gave AFP no comment when asked. Trump separately wrote that there would be no enrichment of material.
US lawmakers from both parties, along with Israeli officials, had previously opposed a Saudi enrichment project because of concern that the capability might eventually be redirected toward nuclear weapons development. Matthew Kroenig of the Atlantic Council said before the formal announcement that granting Saudi Arabia enrichment capability would be a mistake and could weaken US nonproliferation standards.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said any US civilian nuclear agreement would include safeguards intended to prevent its conversion into a weapons programme. Energy Secretary Chris Wright likewise defended the arrangement, saying it would meet high nuclear-safety and nonproliferation standards while using US technology and expertise. He characterized it as serving Washington’s strategic and economic interests.
Saudi Arabia has maintained that it is entitled to pursue civilian nuclear energy. AFP placed the debate amid broader fears that a nuclear weapon produced by Iran could trigger an arms race in the Gulf and noted that Riyadh had signed a mutual defence pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan the previous year.
The announcement thus combined three unresolved issues: Saudi-Israeli normalization, the exact technical limits of US-Saudi nuclear cooperation and congressional acceptance. Trump’s stated condition tied progress on the civilian programme directly to a diplomatic step Riyadh had so far declined to take without movement toward Palestinian statehood.
