US confirms signing a nuclear cooperation pact with Saudi Arabia, to Israel’s alarm
Times of Israel · LC · trust 58/100
The United States and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday forged a new agreement that could potentially provide the kingdom with uranium enrichment capability for its civilian nuclear program.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Minister of Energy Abdulaziz bin Salman formally signed the nuclear cooperation agreement, known as a “123 agreement,” alongside what the Trump administration described as a “bilateral safeguards agreement.”
The US administration released scant details of the deal, but the framework paves the way for the building of a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia after a joint US-Saudi study, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“These agreements reflect our two nations’ shared commitment to strengthening US-Saudi commercial relations, delivering prosperity at home and security to our allies abroad,” Wright said in a statement. “Rest assured, these agreements uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation, while relying on the world’s best nuclear technology and scientists, designed right here in the United States.”
Earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to head off emerging criticism of the decision under questioning by reporters about the risk that helping the Saudis fulfill their long-standing desire to enrich their own uranium could lead to new rounds of nuclear proliferation and competition in a volatile region.
“The US is not going to reach any agreement with any country in the world that leads to the risk of proliferation,” said Rubio, who was traveling in the Philippines on Wednesday.
The agreement does not include the International Atomic Energy Agency ‘s Additional Protocol, which would allow for more monitoring, inspections and verification, according to a second person familiar with the decision.
The deal is expected to last 30 years and involve US firms in developing the program. The Energy Department in a statement said it will be submitted for review to Congress. US lawmakers from both parties and Israeli officials have voiced deep concern over such a project due to fears Saudi Arabia could eventually convert it to develop nuclear weapons, though it doesn’t appear likely the Republican-controlled legislature will block its implementation.
The oil-rich kingdom’s Energy Ministry said the agreement bolsters “efforts 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.”
The announcement comes during the war against Iran launched by the US and Israel, in part, to wipe out Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has insisted its nuclear enrichment program is peaceful.
Ahead of the announcement, Alexander Bollfrass, a nuclear expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, called the deal “a revolutionary new approach” to nuclear nonproliferation policy.
“The revolutionary aspect of this agreement is that the United States is not asking Saudi Arabia to abide by the highest possible safeguards, internationally monitored safeguards that are standard and are available today, but instead is willing to at least theoretically transfer highly sensitive technology without the same level of oversight that one would expect,” Bollfrass said.
President Donald Trump, during his first term, and former president Joe Biden tried to reach a nuclear deal with the kingdom to share American technology, with the latter’s administration condition such a move on normalization with Israel. Trump’s administration however apparently made no such demand.
At the White House on Tuesday, Trump spoke broadly about other countries joining the Abraham Accords, the regional normalization agreements he brokered at the end of his first term in 2020, but did not mention Saudi Arabia.
The accords created a regional rubric under which Israel normalized ties with some Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Both Trump and Biden had sought to bring Saudi Arabia into the pact.
Tensions throughout the region following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack and subsequent Gaza war, however, pushed Saudi-Israel normalization further out of reach. The Saudi demands for normalization sharpened in the subsequent years and include Palestinian statehood or, at the very least, progress toward that goal. The Netanyahu government has adamantly rejected such a condition in the wake of the attack, and the Israeli public has increasingly opposed the concept as well.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who died last week, was an ardent advocate for an Israeli-Saudi deal. He had pushed Trump not to make nuclear concessions to Saudi Arabia without the kingdom moving closer to Israel.
Graham had continued to work on normalization in the months leading up to his death. He told CBS News in June, “We’re going to try to get Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords to end the Arab-Israeli conflict in 2026.”
Dan Shapiro, who worked during the Biden administration as a senior adviser on Middle East regional integration for the State Department, said Wednesday that a US-Saudi nuclear deal would make such normalization more difficult.
The plan originally was for a civil nuclear energy agreement with sufficient safeguards against proliferation to be part of a package that would include normalization with Israel, he said.
“It appears that the Trump administration has given it away without normalization,” Shapiro told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Trump’s deal “seems to have abandoned a very important point of leverage to advance another important regional goal of the United States,” he said.
“This was supposed to be a major carrot for Saudi Arabia if they were to normalize with Israel, and now that carrot has been provided without it.”As a result, he said, “the whole incentive…
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