The Israelis had their jaws dropping and dragging on the grounds. The Saudis were cock-a-hoop. The Trump administration remains, as it always does, streaky and fickle. The agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia for the creation of a civilian nuclear program was originally contingent on one vital fact: that Israel and the Kingdom normalise their relations through the Abraham Accords. But President Donald Trump is the enemy of contingency and conditions, indifferent, even hostile to stability. He is the relativising distillate, the corrosive acid that does away with fetters and understanding. Trust him, and any sense of constancy, at your peril.
On July 22, the US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Saudi Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed what was described by the US Department of Energy as “a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement” (also known as a 123 agreement pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act), alongside a bilateral safeguards agreement. The 123 agreement is intended to provide US companies access to the Kingdom’s nuclear energy program, supposedly “benefiting American industry, workers, and supply chains while helping to meet Saudi energy needs.” Vacuous and inconsistent words followed: the claim that these agreements uphold “high standards of nuclear safety, security and nonproliferation” and that the US “competitive edge in civil nuclear technology” is being strengthened.
Secretary Wright was also in a reassuring mood that “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.”
Neither the department media release, nor Secretary Wright, made mention of the original contingency for such a deal, namely the normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Riyadh had made it a fundamental condition that participating in the sanitising procedure of normalisation would entail Israel’s commitment to a clear path towards Palestinian statehood.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy also made no mention of any impediments to the arrangement, claiming that the agreement bolstered “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.”
On Truth Social, Trump was ready with a qualifying blast, tethering what seemed, at least initially, to an unconditional agreement. “The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!)… which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.” In separate remarks, the President also claimed that, while he did not talk about the accords with Wright prior to inking the deal, “it was always understood, and Chris knew, and Saudi Arabia knew.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also reiterated the point that, if Saudi Arabia did not join the Accords, “the deal is off.” Conversations would continue being held with the Saudis on that score.
Trump’s clarifications did hit the right note in Israel. But the idea that Saudi Arabia might be permitted a uranium enrichment facility was already being mooted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2023, though this caused some dismay among members of the defence forces, the intelligence agency Mossad and the Israel nuclear energy agency. Channel 13, drawing from an unnamed source apparently close to the Israeli PM, revealed that Israel would want “to know what the level of American monitoring of such a process would be, what would be the level of involvement and what would be Israel’s insurance policy, and accordingly devise a clear position.”
However advertised, the US-Saudi nuclear deal does present a proliferation threat that would involve the production of fissile material. Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East program at the US-based Defense Priorities, shudders at the prospect. “The US has never done this before. We have never helped another country enrich on their own soil.” The impeccable logic here was that producing one’s own nuclear fuel presented a “much bigger risk” for the construction of nuclear weapons. “Once you have it on your ground,” insists Gil Murciano, CEO at Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, “it’s only a question of the level of enrichment.” Given the resources available to the Saudis, becoming a “threshold nation” would be easy fare.
It also seems anomalous that the gulf kingdom, being the world’s largest oil exporter, would be so keen on a civilian nuclear industry. A plausible theory here is that nuclear energy will serve to reduce carbon emissions under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic plan, reduce Saudi consumption of oil for electricity and enable a great share of oil for export. Hussain Abdul-Hussain of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies suggests another, less benign motive: that any such industry will be positioned for any eventuality that Iran develops its own nuclear weapons. As the Crown Prince told CBS News in 2018, “without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as long as possible.”
The terms of the deal have yet to be released in full. Despite Trump’s current position, were US companies to build a uranium enrichment facility for the Saudis, it is axiomatic that the steps towards producing highly enriched uranium that could then be used in a military program diminish. It is also worth noting that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which Saudi Arabia is a signatory, does not deal with the thorny topic of enrichment.
It then follows that what is good for one Sunni state might well be good for others. A domestic enrichment facility starts becoming appealing to others: Egypt or Turkey for instance. But that will be some way off: this agreement could reach its terminus in print and aspiration, becoming yet another one of Trump’s aborted projects.
Also by Dr Binoy
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The hypocrisy in all this! Saudi Arabia doesn’t need nuclear energy. What Bin Salman would want is nuclear weaponry, to counter Israel which DOES HAVE nuclear weaponry. Enrichment of uranium is accepted and legal – for medical and industrial purposes, which Iran was doing, in compliance with IAEA rules. And Iran is a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty. So how come it’s OK for Israel’s genocidal criminal regime -to have nuclear weapons, (and be not a member of the NPT?). Iran’s murdered Ayatollah maintained a fatwa against having nuclear weapons. Under Iran’s Islamic law they are evil. Under Christian and Zionist Jewish law – they’re good, (as long as only WE have them). Yes enriched uranium is useful mainly for diagnostic purposes in medicine, – so it’s considered OK. But with the advent of new little nukes, supporting killer nuclear weapons, there’s renewed interest in enriched uranium for their fuel. But then, amongst all the hypocrisy – there’s also the intentional fickleness of Donald Trump, whose “diplomatic” skill is in lying and in keeping everybody guessing, while he pursues his own financial investment interests.
And what about Jamal Khashoggi? Does nobody care about the cruel murder 2018, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul of that Washington Post journalist? Of course Trump never did.
It is quite an arc of destruction that Trump is building: from Drill Baby Drill to Enrich, Enrich Who — the consequences be damned.
The fossil fuel binge and this nuclear deal are not separate policies. They are the same impulse: extract now, proliferate tomorrow, and let someone else manage the fallout. The Saudis will replace domestic oil-burning for electricity with nuclear power, freeing more crude for export, while Washington helps them spin centrifuges for “civilian” fuel. The symmetry is almost elegant in its recklessness.
The connective tissue is financial. The Trump Organization has closed at least nine deals with Saudi investors since the end of his first term, worth an estimated $50 million in 2024 alone, while Jared Kushner’s fund received $2 billion from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The policy and the profit are not separate streams.
But the public debate is asking the wrong question. It is fixated on whether Saudi Arabia will be allowed to “enrich” uranium. The real question is whether any enrichment infrastructure — even a U.S.-operated “black box” — will exist on Saudi soil at all.
Here is why that matters. High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU), enriched to between 10% and 19.75% U-235, is already roughly 90% of the way to weapons-grade material. The World Nuclear Association acknowledges that the time to produce bomb-grade uranium is “shorter when using HALEU as feedstock,” and that the facilities to do so “could be relatively small and so difficult to detect.”
A 1977 declassified U.S. State Department cable advised the IAEA to treat HALEU as a material “of direct utility in an explosive device.” The IAEA rejected that advice, and still classifies HALEU as “indirect-use” material with weaker safeguards. A 2024 paper in Science — co-authored by Richard Garwin, who designed the thermonuclear bomb — confirmed that HALEU can theoretically be used in a fission weapon without further enrichment, and that Los Alamos had known since 1984 that enrichment down to 10% was weapons-usable.
The reported terms allow a U.S.-operated enrichment facility on Saudi soil after a two-year joint study. The centrifuges that produce HALEU for reactor fuel are the same machines that produce weapons-grade material. Reconfiguring cascades from 19.75% to 90% is a matter of piping and time, not new technology. Once you have 20% material, the dash to 90% can be measured in days or weeks.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has already stated his position explicitly: “if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”
So the issue is not whether the Saudis will be allowed to enrich. It is whether they will be allowed to spin centrifuges on their own territory. Because once those machines are running, the difference between a civilian nuclear program and a weapons program is measured in separative work units and political will — and the Crown Prince has already declared his will.
This deal does not prevent a Saudi bomb. It builds the factory and hands MBS the keys. If the Israelis or the Iranians — or the Turks, or the Emiratis — conclude that the factory is operational, the logic of preemption takes over. And preemption in a multipolar Middle East with three or four threshold states is not a regional skirmish. It is the architecture of a wider war.
Continuation of Mad Moscow Mike Flynn’s previous efforts on behalf of MBS and Saudi, now Jared Kushner?
Kushner’s influence runs between Trump, Netanyahu, Moscow elites, Murdoch (Kushner’s mentor], MBS, MBZ (UAE) and Qatar; all allies or frenemies of Israel…?
But hey, if there’s a profit in it,who cares?Armageddon my arse.It looks like we’re all here witnessing, from front row seats, the end of civilisation as we knew it.It’s only fitting that we have Trump as the final, and most egregious representative of humanity’s folly.If not the most sickening.