Trump ties Saudi nuclear deal to Israel normalization, putting pact in doubt

Donald Trump said the U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal was “totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” putting a newly announced civil nuclear pact in doubt and tying it directly to Riyadh’s normalization with Israel. The deal had been reached the day before, and Trump said he would seek congressional approval.

The shift reversed the direction of earlier talks. On May 8, 2025, Saudi civil nuclear negotiations had been delinked from Israel recognition, but Trump’s new condition reinserted normalization into the center of the bargain.

Saudi Arabia invited technical bids in May 2022 for two planned nuclear reactors, and in January 2023 a Saudi minister restated the kingdom’s intention to use domestic uranium resources to produce low-enriched uranium as nuclear fuel. The Biden administration treated normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel as a U.S. national security interest in negotiations over possible U.S.-Saudi agreements.

By March 11, 2026, the 119th Congress was engaging the Trump administration over Saudi Arabia’s National Project for Atomic Energy and U.S.-Saudi nuclear energy cooperation, and in November 2025 the United States and Saudi Arabia signed a Joint Declaration on the Completion of Negotiations on Civil Nuclear Energy Cooperation. Senator Edward J. Markey has repeatedly pushed for tighter oversight. On May 1, 2024, he sought congressional oversight of any Section 123 negotiations, and on November 17, 2025, he warned that a possible agreement could provide Saudi Arabia a pathway to a nuclear weapon and be destabilizing for the Middle East.

Markey called the deal “irresponsible and dangerous” on July 22. Democratic Majority for Israel said giving Saudi Arabia access to American civil nuclear technology without meaningful progress toward normalization with Israel would be a “major strategic mistake” and would squander the prospect for a historic breakthrough.

Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act governs peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements, and the central question has been whether Saudi Arabia would accept restrictions that block enrichment and reprocessing. In February, the administration was removing guardrails from the proposed deal in a document.