US says Saudi nuclear deal off without Israel recognition

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump conditioned a civilian nuclear cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia on July 23 on Riyadh normalising relations with Israel, an action the kingdom has so far refused to take.

Trump said the deal would take effect only if Saudi Arabia joined the US-brokered Abraham Accords under which several Arab states established ties with Israel.

The kingdom has long rejected joining the accords absent a pathway towards Palestinian statehood.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Trump had spoken with Gulf and Arab allies many times about pegging the deal to the Abraham Accords and that if the kingdom does not join them “the deal is off.”

The US and Saudi Arabia announced the agreement on July 22 allowing Riyadh to enrich uranium and build nuclear reactors using US technology without the snap UN inspections Washington has demanded of Iran.

Trump ties Saudi nuclear deal to Abraham Accords

In a post on Truth Social on July 23, Trump wrote: “The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!)... pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”

“The United States is not opposed to Civil (Non-Enriched) Nuclear Facilities,” Trump said.

The US Congress will have 90 session days to review the deal before it goes into force. There would also be a two-year feasibility study on the enrichment part of the agreement.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s post.

Saudi Arabia said before Trump pegged the deal to the Abraham Accords that the agreement supports efforts to diversify energy sources, and includes the “highest international standards” of nuclear safety, security and nonproliferation.

‘We’ll continue to talk,’ press secretary says

“We’ll continue to talk with our Saudi counterparts to get the deal finalized and hopefully see them joining Abraham Accords very soon,” Leavitt told reporters at the White House.

Leavitt said she did not believe Trump had spoken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since his post, but it was something he had raised in previous conversations.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords during Trump’s first term in 2020, breaking a longstanding taboo to become the first Arab states to recognise Israel in a quarter century. Morocco and Sudan followed suit.

Israel, which feared the Saudi deal could ignite a Middle East arms race, welcomed the condition on July 23.

“Saudi Arabia’s joining of the Abraham Accords would be an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Leavitt said she did not know if Netanyahu had requested that the deal be contingent on the wider accords. “Not to my knowledge, no,” she told reporters.

On July 22, the Trump administration said the civil nuclear deal abides by nonproliferation agreements in the US Atomic Energy Act, which are among the world’s strongest.

The deal would let Saudi Arabia enrich uranium and reprocess nuclear waste, both of which are potential pathways to a nuclear weapon. The UAE agreed to forgo both when it signed a similar deal with the US in 2009.

It was unclear what Trump meant in his social media post when he said there would be no nuclear enrichment under the agreement. It was not immediately clear if that was a specific reference to the highly enriched uranium used in weapons. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to about 90 per cent while fuel for nuclear reactors is enriched to up to 6 per cent.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said it was awaiting a request from Washington and Riyadh to implement verification measures under the agreement before seeking authorisation from its board of governors. REUTERS