Key Highlights

  • The Saudi deal will not require the kingdom to forgo uranium enrichment, unlike the 2009 UAE agreement.
  • A two-year joint study will determine whether Saudi Arabia needs domestic enrichment capability.
  • Saudi Arabia would not be required to join the Additional Protocol governing tougher nuclear inspections.
  • Congress can review the deal but would need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto.

A Deal That Falls Short of the Established Standard

When America first reached a nuclear cooperation deal with the United Arab Emirates in 2009, it insisted on strict conditions, requiring the Emiratis to forgo domestic uranium enrichment and reprocessing while signing the Additional Protocol, a follow-on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that provides for rigorous inspections. The UAE agreed and now operates four reactors supplying 25% of its electricity, an arrangement American officials described as a gold standard agreement.

The deal with Saudi Arabia that President Trump announced on July 22nd would not qualify as even a bronze standard by comparison. While the full text has yet to be published, leaked details suggest the agreement will firm up America's uneasy relationship with the kingdom and prove lucrative for American companies, but it risks undermining the broader nonproliferation framework with consequences potentially extending well beyond the Middle East.

Enrichment Left Open Through a Two-Year Study

The agreement, which Congress must review, will not require Saudi Arabia to forgo uranium enrichment. Instead, the two countries will jointly conduct a two-year study on whether the kingdom needs such a capability. If the study concludes it does, America could build an enrichment facility on Saudi soil; if not, the kingdom would agree not to pursue one for ten years. The Trump administration has promised that any Saudi nuclear programme would be subject to rigorous inspections, though the kingdom would not be required to join the Additional Protocol. Congress could block the deal but would need a two-thirds majority to overcome a presidential veto.

Saudi Arabia has legitimate domestic reasons to pursue civil nuclear power, given that sweltering summers strain its electricity grid and the kingdom currently burns crude oil to meet soaring demand, a dirty and wasteful method of generating electricity that nuclear power could help replace, freeing up more oil for export.

Narrower Benefits for Washington Amid Shifting Motivations

The benefits to the United States appear considerably narrower than those to Saudi Arabia. A nuclear deal was originally intended to help persuade Saudi Arabia to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, an outcome that looked imminent before the war in Gaza began in 2023 but no longer appears likely. Announcing the deal now increasingly looks like an attempt to counter China and Russia, both of which saw an opportunity to deepen ties with Saudi Arabia, and may also function as a gesture toward a kingdom frustrated by the Trump administration's handling of its war with Iran.

Saudi Arabia has been a stable monarchy for a century and an American ally for nearly as long, but governments can change, and the kingdom has its own history of extremism, leaving genuine uncertainty about who might control a future Saudi nuclear programme. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman has previously said Saudi Arabia would build its own nuclear weapon should Iran develop one, and recent regional events seem unlikely to have reduced his wariness of neighbouring adversaries.

Regional Ripple Effects and a Broader Nonproliferation Risk

The deal complicates the broader regional picture in several ways. Iran's position in any nuclear talks with America may harden, since Tehran may question why it should relinquish its own uranium-enrichment programme, as Trump has insisted, if Saudi Arabia is permitted to pursue its own capability. The UAE may also object to seeing its Saudi rival secure a more permissive arrangement than the one it accepted in 2009, while Israel, the region's only nuclear power, is likely to view the development with unease, and Turkey may begin questioning whether it should pursue its own nuclear ambitions.

This points to a larger concern regarding the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has been a rare nonproliferation success since it was signed in 1968, with only four new countries having acquired and retained nuclear weapons over that period. The taboo on proliferation has long enjoyed bipartisan support in America, and while allowing an ally to pursue latent nuclear capability may appear relatively harmless in isolation, this is precisely the kind of incremental erosion through which the broader treaty framework can begin to crumble. Officials in South Korea are reportedly discussing quietly whether acquiring a bomb would better deter their nuclear-armed neighbour to the north, particularly if America's nuclear umbrella comes to be seen as unreliable, while Japan's defence minister has recently urged a domestic debate on the country's own nuclear weapons policy.

Conclusion

Perhaps the Saudi enrichment facility studied under this agreement will never actually be built, since commissioning a study is a familiar way of deferring difficult decisions, and the two-year timeline means the ultimate choice may fall to a successor administration likely to be less erratic and less financially connected to the kingdom. Still, the current terms fall meaningfully short of the standard applied to the UAE, and whether Congress presses the administration to insist on stricter conditions, comparable to those governing the Emirati programme, may prove important in determining whether this deal becomes an isolated exception or the beginning of a broader unravelling of global nonproliferation norms.