U.S. President Donald Trump linked a landmark nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia to the kingdom’s recognition of Israel, triggering uncertainty over the agreement’s fate just days after its announcement.
Trump’s Ultimatum and the White House’s Defense
The deal will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,
Trump tweeted, according to NST. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the move, stating that Trump had long made the Abraham Accords a prerequisite for the deal. The president is always the final dealmaker.
He has said if they don't join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off,
she told reporters.
The White House insisted that Trump’s condition had been communicated to Saudi officials during prior conversations. The president has spoken directly with the Saudis about this in numerous conversations in the past, and the administration will continue to engage in those conversations,
Leavitt said.
Proliferation Concerns and Regional Fears
The nuclear deal, which would have allowed U.S. companies to build a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia, faced immediate scrutiny over proliferation risks. Critics warned that such a facility could eventually be used to develop nuclear weapons, despite U.S. safeguards. If Washington tries to force normalisation on Riyadh, it's not likely to work out very well,
said H.A. Hellyer, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a leading UK defence and security think tank NST.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized that any agreement would include safeguards in place to ensure that it can't be turned into a weapons programme,
according to NST. However, the U.S. Energy Department did not confirm the enrichment provision, and Trump himself later tweeted, no enrichment of material!
—a statement that further muddied the deal’s terms.
A Divisive Agreement and Political Crosscurrents
The deal had already faced bipartisan opposition in Congress, with lawmakers expressing concerns about nuclear proliferation and U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East. Robert Einhorn, a former longtime senior State Department official who advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on nonproliferation issues, argued that the agreement could revitalize the U.S. nuclear industry, strengthen U.S.-Saudi ties, and deny Russia and China a strategically important role in the Saudi nuclear program
.
Yet Trump’s last-minute condition risked undermining the deal entirely. Elisa Ewers, a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the move Leave it to this administration to negotiate after the signatures are barely dry,
noting that Saudi Arabia had long resisted joining the Abraham Accords. She told The Atlantic.
What Comes Next for the Deal?
The agreement now faces an uncertain future. While Trump’s ultimatum could pressure Saudi Arabia to reconsider its stance on the Abraham Accords, the kingdom has shown little inclination to normalize relations with Israel. Would Saudi decide to do a complete 180 on what it has declared for the past three years, or 30 years? Quite dubious,
Hellyer said.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called recognition by Saudi Arabia, a regional power and home to Islam’s holiest sites, a historic leap
forward for peace in the Middle East, but Saudi officials remained silent on the latest development. As the U.S.
