Trump's Saudi Nuclear Deal Allows Enrichment, Then Reverses
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- Trump signed a nuclear cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia on July 22, reportedly including the right to enrich uranium on Saudi soil in a "black-boxed" facility the U.S. would construct.
- The agreement, signed by U.S. Energy Secretary Christopher Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman, focused exclusively on nuclear issues with no mention of Israel or normalization.
- Trump added a Saudi-Israel normalization requirement via Truth Social on July 23, a reversal that would likely kill the deal and included what the source calls a "demonstrably false" claim that Saudis could not enrich on their soil.
- The pact reportedly falls short of the 2009 U.S.-UAE "123 Agreement," which excluded enrichment and reprocessing and required IAEA safeguards; Saudi Arabia refused to accept the IAEA's additional protocol for intrusive inspections.
- Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pursuing a "360-degree foreign policy" remaining close to Russia and China, a posture the source flags as a long-term reliability concern for any U.S.-Saudi nuclear partnership.
- The deal comes as the U.S. is bombing Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment activities, a contradiction the source argues undermines decades of U.S. counterproliferation policy and gives Iran propaganda ammunition.
Why it matters: The deal reportedly grants Saudi Arabia what the 2009 UAE accord explicitly denied — domestic enrichment rights — while Saudi Arabia refused the IAEA's additional protocol for intrusive inspections. That contradiction, paired with simultaneous U.S. strikes on Iran's enrichment facilities, exposes a credibility gap in American nonproliferation policy that Tehran can exploit for decades.
