US President Donald Trump has sent Congress a proposed agreement with Saudi Arabia on civil nuclear energy while insisting the pact will only be approved if the kingdom normalizes relations with Israel, an administration official told The Times of Israel.
The agreement, which was reached in July and would allow US companies to export civilian nuclear technology to the kingdom, was sent to Congress on Monday, according to the US official.
The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was not clear how Trump expects sending the nuclear deal to Congress, which has 90 session days to consider it, will advance his objectives.
“The president’s position has not changed that the agreement will only move forward if Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords,” the US official said in an email, referring to US-brokered agreements to normalize relations between Israel and Arab and Muslim-majority nations.
Those accords, reached in 2020 and 2021, were between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.
Days after agreeing to the Saudi nuclear deal in July, Trump, who worked on a similar pact during his first term, set normalization as a condition for it to go into effect.
The retroactive condition from Trump followed alarm from Israel and its supporters over the administration’s decision to proceed with the agreement without an Abraham Accords condition.
The text of the agreement signed last month did not mention a requirement for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, an official familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel at the time.
Former US president Joe Biden also pushed for a nuclear deal and wanted to tie it to the accords. Diplomats thought Riyadh was close to normalizing relations with Israel in 2023, but Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught against Israel and the ensuing Gaza war changed the landscape.
Saudi Arabia has demanded an irreversible path to a Palestinian state before recognizing Israel — something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has rejected outright.
The 30-year nuclear deal calls for the construction of AP1000 reactors, a project worth tens of billions of dollars that would benefit Westinghouse, jointly owned by Canada-based Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management.
Some Democratic lawmakers and nonproliferation advocates have criticized the nuclear pact for not barring Saudi Arabia from enriching uranium or reprocessing nuclear waste, two potential pathways for making a nuclear weapon. The UAE agreed to such measures, known as the gold standard, in its 2009 civil nuclear deal with Washington.
The Trump administration says the deal has nonproliferation measures required by law.
By starting the process, Trump has opened the possibility that Congress could allow the deal to proceed without normalization and proliferation stipulations, said Henry Sokolski, the head of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. “This is hardly ideal if you’re serious about no enrichment and recognition of Israel,” Sokolski said.
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