Saudi nuclear deal stalls after Trump adds Israel condition

Less than 24 hours after the U.S. Department of Energy declared a “historic” civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia on July 22, 2026, President Donald Trump added a condition that had not appeared in the deal’s announcement: Riyadh must first join the Abraham Accords and recognize Israel.

Trump’s Truth Social post, published Thursday, put a 30-year nuclear partnership in immediate jeopardy. The accord, which covers a civil nuclear cooperation framework — known in U.S. law as a 123 agreement — and a mandatory nuclear safeguards agreement, was billed by the Energy Department as a vehicle to bring American nuclear technology to the kingdom. But Trump’s new requirement collides directly with a Saudi diplomatic position held for years: Riyadh will not normalize relations with Israel without a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood, something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly and repeatedly rejected. The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment Thursday on Trump’s Abraham Accords assertion, according to Reuters and the Associated Press.

A precondition that wasn’t there the day before

The sequence of events is notable. Multiple outlets reported on Wednesday, when the deal was announced, that it would not carry an Israel-normalization requirement — a deliberate softening of the terms the Biden administration had once attached to similar discussions. Then, on Thursday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that the agreement “will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” contradicting his own administration’s rollout the previous day, as NPR reported.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday that the administration would keep talking with Saudi counterparts. “We’ll continue to talk with our Saudi counterparts to get the deal finalized and hopefully see them joining Abraham Accords very soon,” Leavitt said, according to Reuters. She added that she did not believe Trump had spoken directly with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since posting his condition, though she said Trump had raised the issue in prior conversations with the crown prince.

The deal itself remains unsigned by Congress. CNN, citing four sources familiar with the matter, reported that as of Thursday the agreements had not been transmitted to Capitol Hill for review — a step required by federal law once a 123 agreement is signed. The White House did not respond to CNN’s questions on that point.

What’s at stake on enrichment and proliferation

Beyond the Israel question, the nuclear deal itself has drawn scrutiny over what it permits Saudi Arabia to do with uranium. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said as recently as 2019 that Saudi Arabia aims to pursue the full nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment, and in January 2023 laid out plans to produce low-enriched uranium from domestic resources, according to Time magazine. He has also warned publicly that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia will pursue one as well.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who announced the end of nuclear negotiations with Riyadh in October 2025, described the framework as maintaining “a firm commitment to nonproliferation” while delivering American nuclear technology to the kingdom. But the specific terms on uranium enrichment remain disputed in public reporting. Al Jazeera reported that some U.S. media accounts suggest the deal would allow Saudi enrichment on domestic soil — a significant departure from the stricter terms contemplated under the Biden administration, which envisioned a U.S.-only enrichment model at a U.S.-controlled facility.

Israel had initially raised alarm at the prospect of any Saudi nuclear cooperation deal, fearing a regional arms race. After Trump attached the Abraham Accords condition on Thursday, the Israeli government welcomed the move, according to Reuters — a reversal that underscores how tightly nuclear policy and regional diplomacy are now intertwined.

The collision of three unresolved threads

The episode reflects a broader pattern in Trump’s Middle East policy: multiple bilateral negotiations — with Saudi Arabia, with Iran, over Gaza — advancing on separate tracks that occasionally contradict one another. Under Biden, Saudi-Israel normalization was bundled explicitly with the nuclear deal and Palestinian political progress. Trump’s first term produced the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, but Saudi Arabia held out, insisting on a Palestinian state or its functional equivalent as a precondition.

The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza moved Saudi-Israel normalization further from reach, as Time reported. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House in November 2025 produced the legal foundation for a nuclear energy partnership, but it did not resolve the political equation. Netanyahu’s government has described Palestinian statehood as untenable for Israeli security, making the Saudi precondition and the Israeli precondition effectively irreconcilable under current conditions.

How the administration plans to square that circle — or whether it intends to — is unclear. The White House has not detailed what concessions, if any, might substitute for formal Palestinian statehood in a deal Riyadh could accept.

Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, and The Washington Post provided reporting that informed this article. The 123 agreement and its safeguards annex have not been made public by either government.

Congress must receive and review the 123 agreement before it can enter into force; that transmission has not yet occurred. The next scheduled public signal will come from Capitol Hill, where lawmakers on both parties have raised questions about the deal’s nonproliferation provisions.