Trump said on 23 July that the 30-year US-Saudi civil nuclear cooperation agreement is "totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords", the 2020 US-brokered normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab states1. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed it in plainer terms: "If they don't join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off." Asked why the condition had not appeared at the signing, she said Trump "is always the final dealmaker"2.
The Department of Energy's own announcement of the signing, issued 22 July, mentions neither Israel nor the Accords anywhere in its text. One day separates the deed from the condition attached to it. The agreement is reported to include a US-operated uranium enrichment facility on Saudi soil, which is the concession Washington has withheld from every previous Saudi approach.
A civil nuclear cooperation agreement of this kind goes to Congress for a review period before it can take effect, and no Federal Register notice or Department of Energy Part 810 authorisation exists yet, correctly, because that review has not run. A condition announced verbally does not appear in the text Congress reviews. Riyadh is therefore being asked to trade normalisation with Israel for an instrument whose enforceable terms and whose stated price are recorded in two different places, only one of which is binding.
The timing sharpens it. Gulf states have moved from absorbing Iranian fire to flying strikes on Iranian depots, with Bahraini and Kuwaiti aircraft under UAE air cover, which is about as far as military alignment with Washington goes short of a treaty. Normalisation with Israel remains the one thing Riyadh has declined to spend, and this administration has now attached The Kingdom's nuclear programme to it by post.
