Trump Fumes at Energy Secretary Over Saudi Nuclear Deal — SkimNews
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- Trump was furious that Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia on Wednesday without informing him, according to CNN, leading Trump to retroactively condition the deal on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords.
- Energy Secretary Chris Wright did not tell Trump he would be announcing the deal, surprising and angering many in the White House despite The Wall Street Journal having reported the deal was being finalized a day earlier.
- The Saudi nuclear deal would allow US companies to provide nuclear energy to Saudi Arabia and included the possibility of nuclear enrichment on Saudi territory, a provision that alarmed nuclear proliferation experts.
- Trump's Truth Social post making the deal conditional came minutes after a Fox News panel questioned the agreement, and in it he insisted there would be 'no enrichment of material,' comparing the deal to existing agreements with Iran and the UAE.
- Saudi Arabia's longstanding position is that it will not sign the Abraham Accords without a roadmap to Palestinian statehood, a non-starter for Israel's current government, making the conditional deal likely a dead letter.
- Trump claimed regional countries had been hesitant to join the Abraham Accords due to Iran, but the article notes Riyadh and other regional states have never cited Iranian concerns as their reason for reluctance to normalize ties with Israel.
Why it matters: The Trump administration signed a nuclear cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia, then scrambled to impose an Israel-normalization condition after conservative media backlash — revealing how a major nonproliferation agreement was politicized in real time. With Saudi Arabia demanding a Palestinian statehood roadmap as its normalization precondition, the retroactively conditional deal is likely dead on arrival given the current Israeli government's position.
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