Trump ties Saudi nuclear deal to recognizing Israel

President Donald Trump said Thursday that a landmark U.S. civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia will depend on the kingdom normalizing relations with Israel, adding a major condition that was not included when the deal was announced a day earlier.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the agreement “pertains only to non-military use” and would involve “no enrichment of material.” He added that the deal “will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”

The Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States during Trump’s first term, were designed to normalize relations between Israel and Arab and Muslim-majority countries. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the accords in 2020, and Sudan and Morocco later normalized relations with Israel. Expanding the agreements across the Middle East has been a long-standing objective for Trump in his second term.

The statement marked the first public indication that Saudi participation in the accords was a requirement for the nuclear agreement. The Energy Department, which announced the deal Wednesday on X, did not mention the Abraham Accords. The Trump administration has not publicly released the text of the agreement or outlined all of its details.

The Energy Department said Wednesday that the agreements “lay the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances several priority economic and strategic objectives, including nuclear nonproliferation.” The agreement was signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman.

Saudi Arabia’s own announcement also did not mention Trump’s conditions. The kingdom said the agreement would seek to “diversify energy sources, advance cutting-edge technologies, and expand opportunities for cooperation and investment in ways that serve the mutual interests of the two friendly countries.”

A senior administration official told NBC News on Wednesday that Trump had approved the deal and that it was expected to be submitted to Congress for review.

Lawmakers and nuclear experts have raised concerns that a civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia could fuel nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. The BBC reported that experts criticized the deal as carrying a risk of future nuclear proliferation in an already unstable region, and said the nuclear issue has been central to the months-long U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran.

According to NBC News, the deal was not expected to require the most rigorous level of United Nations inspections or include a ban on uranium enrichment or reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, citing three people familiar with the agreement. Those people said the pact would allow U.S. companies to build a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia pending a joint U.S.-Saudi study examining whether such a step would be feasible.

Trump’s statement appeared to conflict with those reported details by saying there would be “no enrichment of material.”

An agreement to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia had previously been a U.S. requirement for any deal allowing the Gulf kingdom to enrich uranium. Saudi leaders have long said normalization would not be possible without meaningful progress toward a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the idea of Palestinian statehood.

Saudi Arabia is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which promotes peaceful nuclear activity and inspects countries to ensure they do not run clandestine nuclear weapons programs. Nuclear enrichment can be used in civil nuclear power generation and, at higher levels, in the development of nuclear weapons.