Will the U.S.-Saudi Nuclear Deal Proceed?

On July 22, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a bilateral agreement laying the foundation for civil nuclear cooperation, including the commercial development of a nuclear power industry in Saudi Arabia utilizing U.S. technology. Along with solar and wind, Saudi Arabia regards nuclear energy as a key element of its plans under Vision 2030 to diversify away from its dependence on fossil fuels. Indeed, for a country that currently generates more than a third of its domestic electricity by burning crude oil that it would rather export for profit, nuclear power is not an unreasonable ambition.

The announcement was quickly overshadowed by two controversies, however. The first was press reports suggesting that the agreement would permit Saudi Arabia to develop a uranium enrichment capacity, allowing it to join the short list of countries—currently just 14—with indigenous nuclear enrichment facilities. Saudi Arabia reportedly has considerable uranium deposits and has long had ambitions to own the entire nuclear “supply chain,” from uranium mine to power plant. Although such a development would, according to these press reports, come only after a multiyear period of consultations over the commercial viability of an enrichment facility, the prospect raised nuclear proliferation concerns in the United States and in Israel—specifically that the just-signed agreement could put Saudi Arabia on a path to developing nuclear weapons.

The second controversy came seemingly in reaction to the first. Not a day after the agreement was signed, President Trump issued a statement on social media linking the deal to Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords. He also seemed to rule out uranium enrichment and, oddly, to equate the Iranian and UAE nuclear programs.

Trump’s insistence that the nuclear deal would be contingent on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel surprised many observers, seemingly adding a major condition to an agreement that his most senior officials had negotiated on his behalf and signed to great fanfare only a day earlier. This nuclear deal does not change the Saudi calculus on normalization, however. Saudi agreement to pursue normalization with Israel still depends—as it has since normalization negotiations began during the Biden administration—on Israel agreeing to support the creation of a Palestinian state. A Palestinian state has been explicitly and repeatedly ruled out by the current Israeli government.

Beyond that, ruling out enrichment may also vex the Saudi leadership. While a uranium enrichment facility may be extraordinarily expensive, take a decade or more to develop, and ultimately not be viable on a commercial basis, Saudi Arabia likely discerned great political value in claiming both the right and ability to pursue it.

Likely driving Trump’s surprise announcement was a desire to blunt the domestic and Israeli criticism that emerged as soon as the deal was announced. But it will leave everyone—including the Saudis, the U.S. nuclear power industry, and the U.S. Congress, which has 90 days to review the deal—quite confused.

During the Biden administration, the United States and Saudi Arabia had been negotiating a grand deal that was to include a U.S.-Saudi mutual defense treaty, a bilateral defense cooperation agreement, the advancement of prospects for Palestinian statehood, and a set of economic measures, among them an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation. The idea at the time was that only a deal with something for everyone—the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinians—could garner the 67 votes necessary in the U.S. Senate to win ratification of a U.S.-Saudi treaty.

The Gaza war in the aftermath of the October 7 terror attacks in Israel made that all much more difficult, and Israel’s refusal to support a two-state solution effectively took the deal off the table for the foreseeable future. During his current administration, President Trump has given Saudi Arabia most of what it would have gained from a normalization deal: a major upgrade in the strategic partnership, including an agreement to sell F-35 fighter jets; economic agreements, including on artificial intelligence; and now a civil nuclear agreement. And he did it all without Saudi Arabia normalizing with Israel, which effectively left the prospect of normalization even more remote. By inserting normalization at the last minute, President Trump now throws a great deal of uncertainty into a deal that was always going to be controversial and creates more questions about the reliability of the United States as a strategic partner.

Michael Ratney served for over three decades as a U.S. diplomat, most recently as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He is currently a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.