WASHINGTON — The United States signed a thirty-year nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia on July 22 that grants the kingdom a path to domestic uranium enrichment and makes no mention of normalization with Israel. The Biden-era bargain — three years of shuttle diplomacy in which Saudi nuclear access was held hostage to a peace deal — is formally dead, killed not by Riyadh but by Washington.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed the 123 agreement at the Department of Energy, deliberately framing the most consequential nuclear cooperation deal since the 2009 UAE pact as a commercial transaction. The agreement includes a provision for a potential in-kingdom enrichment facility — the first offered to any Arab state — while omitting all three pillars of the post-2009 nonproliferation benchmark. Dan Shapiro, a senior adviser in Biden’s State Department, identified what was surrendered: “It appears that the Trump administration has given it away without normalization.”
Table of Contents
- What Did the 123 Agreement Actually Sign Away?
- The Three Pillars Biden Built and Trump Removed
- Why Was the Nuclear Deal Linked to Normalization?
- What Did Israel Lose on July 22?
- The Black Box on Saudi Soil
- Does Congress Have the Votes to Block It?
- The Charge That Writes Itself
- The Prize Without the Price
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Did the 123 Agreement Actually Sign Away?
The 123 agreement — named for Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, which governs US nuclear cooperation with foreign states — grants Saudi Arabia a framework for civilian nuclear cooperation that runs through 2056. Its central provision allows a potential in-kingdom uranium enrichment facility, subject to a prior two-year joint US-Saudi feasibility study, to be built and operated by American companies. No Arab state has ever been offered domestic enrichment access in a US nuclear cooperation agreement.
What the agreement does not contain is at least as consequential as what it does. The Jerusalem Post confirmed that the signed text makes no mention of normalization with Israel — the condition that defined every version of this deal under Biden. The Arms Control Association’s Sharon Squassoni, who published a detailed assessment on June 12, found that the agreement “abandons every nonproliferation standard Washington spent seventeen years building.” The standard she referenced is the 2009 UAE deal, which became the benchmark known as the Gold Standard, and which Saudi Arabia has now entirely sidestepped.
Wright described the agreement at the signing as upholding “the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation,” a claim that is defensible only if you define the standard as whatever this particular agreement contains. The three commitments Washington extracted from Abu Dhabi in 2009 — a permanent enrichment ban, a permanent reprocessing ban, and mandatory ratification of the IAEA Additional Protocol — are absent from the Saudi text. In their place is a bilateral US-Saudi safeguards arrangement whose terms have not been made public.
Before the agreement was signed, Saudi Arabia was building toward a nuclear ceiling it could not independently set. The signed deal answers that question: the ceiling is now established, and the kingdom did not have to concede anything beyond what it was already prepared to give.
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The Three Pillars Biden Built and Trump Removed
In 2009, the United Arab Emirates agreed to permanently renounce domestic uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing as conditions for receiving US civilian nuclear cooperation. Abu Dhabi also ratified the IAEA Additional Protocol, submitting to the most intrusive international inspection regime available. These three commitments — the enrichment ban, the reprocessing ban, and the Additional Protocol — became what the nonproliferation community calls the Gold Standard, the benchmark against which every subsequent US nuclear cooperation agreement was measured.
The significance of the Gold Standard was never merely technical. When Abu Dhabi accepted permanent enrichment and reprocessing bans, it sent a political signal that civilian nuclear programs in the Gulf could operate within constraints that made weapons development structurally difficult — not merely prohibited by treaty language, but materially blocked by the absence of enrichment infrastructure. The model was designed to be exported: every subsequent US nuclear cooperation agreement with a Gulf or Middle Eastern state was expected to match or exceed the UAE’s commitments. Saudi Arabia rejected the Gold Standard consistently for more than a decade, and the 123 agreement represents Washington’s decision to stop insisting.
The Saudi agreement abandons all three pillars. The enrichment ban is replaced by a provision that explicitly permits enrichment on Saudi soil. The reprocessing ban is absent entirely. The IAEA Additional Protocol — which gives inspectors the right to visit undeclared sites and demand short-notice access — is replaced by a bilateral US-Saudi safeguards arrangement whose specific terms remain classified. Squassoni titled her assessment “Saudi Arabia’s Gilded Nuclear Sweetheart Deal,” identifying the absence of all three commitments as a deliberate policy reversal rather than a negotiating oversight.
| Provision | UAE 2009 (Gold Standard) | Saudi Arabia 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic uranium enrichment | Permanently renounced | Permitted (subject to joint feasibility study) |
| Plutonium reprocessing | Permanently renounced | Not prohibited |
| IAEA Additional Protocol | Ratified before US exports | Replaced by bilateral safeguards (terms undisclosed) |
| Normalization with Israel | Not a condition | Not mentioned |
| Agreement duration | 30 years | 30 years |
The Atlantic Council’s response on July 22 captured how cleanly the deal splits expert opinion. Matthew Kroenig, who leads the council’s Scowcroft Center, drew the line: “It would be a mistake to allow Saudi Arabia the capability for enrichment. Washington is right to strengthen its relationship with Riyadh, but it should not do so at the expense of its effective nuclear weapons nonproliferation standards.” His colleague Jennifer Gordon, who directs the council’s Nuclear Energy Policy Initiative, called the deal “a win for the United States over Russia and China.” Both assessments appeared on the same page, on the same day, from the same institution.
The divide tracks a fault line running through the entire American foreign policy establishment: whether it is more dangerous to give Saudi Arabia enrichment access or to let Russian and Chinese competitors fill the vacuum. The 123 agreement answers that question by choosing commercial advantage over nonproliferation constraint, and the consequences of that choice will unfold over the thirty-year life of the deal.
Why Was the Nuclear Deal Linked to Normalization?
The linkage was Biden’s deliberate policy choice, not a legal requirement of the Atomic Energy Act. Section 123 mandates nonproliferation commitments in any cooperation agreement; it does not mandate bundling the deal with a peace treaty. But the Biden administration treated Saudi nuclear cooperation as a high-value inducement inside a larger diplomatic package that required Mohammed bin Salman to normalize relations with Israel. If the kingdom wanted American nuclear technology, it would have to deliver something Washington valued even more: a Saudi-Israeli recognition deal that would redraw the regional map.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to fly to Riyadh on October 10, 2023, specifically to advance this framework — three days after the Hamas attack on October 7 that collapsed the timetable and the political conditions beneath it. By the time the diplomatic wreckage was cleared, Saudi terms had hardened to require Palestinian statehood as a precondition for normalization, a condition Netanyahu could not accept and Biden could not deliver. The nuclear-for-normalization framework froze in place and never thawed.
The framework’s collapse was not merely a scheduling casualty. After October 7, Saudi Arabia’s insistence on Palestinian statehood carried different weight: it functioned as a structural refusal to normalize under Israeli military operations in Gaza, consistent with the Arab Peace Initiative but newly rigid in its application. The nuclear deal, tethered to normalization, was held in suspended animation by a condition neither Washington nor Jerusalem could satisfy. Biden’s leverage, which had seemed formidable enough to generate White House confidence in 2023, turned out to depend entirely on conditions the administration could not control.
Trump’s approach was not to rebuild the framework but to dismantle it. By signing the 123 agreement without normalization and without Gold Standard safeguards, the administration removed both the nuclear price and the diplomatic cost simultaneously. Saudi Arabia no longer needs to recognize Israel to access enrichment, and Israel no longer holds a structural veto over the kingdom’s nuclear future. The deal Senator Lindsey Graham spent years trying to close was finally closed by a different president, on different terms, with different consequences.
Shapiro, who helped build the Biden framework, identified the strategic cost: Trump “seems to have abandoned a very important point of leverage to advance another important regional goal of the United States.” The leverage was the nuclear deal, and that leverage has now been spent on an agreement that delivered the kingdom’s nuclear ambitions without purchasing any of the diplomatic outcomes Washington had spent three years trying to secure.
What Did Israel Lose on July 22?
Israel lost the price tag. Under Biden, the cost of Saudi nuclear access was normalization — Israeli interests were structurally embedded in the deal’s terms even without Israel being a party to the agreement. Under Trump, the cost was removed, and the kingdom received enrichment access without recognizing Israel, without conceding anything on Palestinian statehood, and without any commitment to the diplomatic framework that Biden and Blinken had spent three years constructing.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called it “a severe strategic failure that jeopardizes our security,” warning the deal would trigger “a regional nuclear arms race and a dangerous loss of control.” Then he delivered the line that Israeli commentators will be quoting for years: “Israel is not around the table; it is on the table.”
Israel is not around the table; it is on the table.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, July 22, 2026
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak read the absent normalization language as evidence of something beyond policy — a bilateral collapse. The missing Israeli reference, Barak said, “is a sign of the loss of trust between Netanyahu and Trump,” arguing that “the friction between them means that Trump acts without taking Netanyahu’s stance into account.” If Barak is right, Israel did not lose a policy argument; it lost its seat in the room, and it lost that seat because its prime minister’s relationship with the American president deteriorated past the point where consultation was considered necessary.
The Times of Israel captured the breadth of Israeli alarm in its liveblog, quoting former leaders describing the agreement as triggering an “‘insane nuclear arms race.'” The practical consequence extends beyond the nuclear question itself. The Biden framework had linked three American interests — nuclear nonproliferation, Israeli-Arab peace, and Saudi strategic partnership — into a single transaction where progress on one required progress on all. Trump’s decoupling means these interests are now pursued separately, the most valuable inducement has already been spent, and the normalization push, if it continues at all, will need to find leverage the administration has not identified and may not possess.
The Black Box on Saudi Soil
The enrichment provision operates through what analysts have called a “black box” mechanism that keeps the capability in the kingdom while keeping the knowledge in American hands. The enrichment facility would be built and operated by US companies — Westinghouse is the leading candidate — with technology transfer to Saudi personnel explicitly excluded from the agreement. Construction is contingent on a two-year joint US-Saudi feasibility study that has not yet begun, meaning enrichment capability is a structural possibility embedded in a signed agreement rather than an imminent operational reality.
The bilateral safeguards arrangement that replaces the IAEA Additional Protocol is the least understood element of the deal and the most consequential for nonproliferation enforcement. Under the Additional Protocol, IAEA inspectors have the right to visit undeclared sites, demand short-notice access, and conduct environmental sampling anywhere in a signatory state. Under the bilateral arrangement, inspection and verification rights are defined by negotiated US-Saudi terms that have not been publicly disclosed. The distinction between multilateral inspection and bilateral trust may prove decisive over a thirty-year agreement, and its implications cannot be assessed until the bilateral terms are released.
The scale of Saudi nuclear ambition is not speculative. The King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy has a stated target of 17.6 gigawatts of nuclear electricity by 2040, and the kingdom solicited bids for two 1.4-gigawatt reactors at Khor Duweihin in 2022 from American, French, South Korean, Chinese, and Russian suppliers. The 123 agreement effectively ends that competition with Chinese and Russian reactor vendors by locking Saudi nuclear infrastructure into the American commercial ecosystem for three decades.
The question that hangs over the black box is what happens to an American-operated facility on Saudi soil if the bilateral relationship deteriorates over a thirty-year window. Saudi Arabia’s recent exclusion from multiple regional diplomatic tracks and the broader realignment of Gulf alliances are reminders that no bilateral arrangement, however carefully drafted, is immune to the forces that reshape relationships over decades. A facility that operates as an American safeguard in 2028 may operate as something quite different by 2050.
Does Congress Have the Votes to Block It?
Once the signed agreement is formally submitted to Congress, a ninety-day review clock begins under the Atomic Energy Act. During that window, Congress can pass a joint resolution of disapproval to block the deal, but the structure is pass-unless-disapproved — the agreement takes effect unless both chambers vote to reject it and sustain a presidential veto. No 123 agreement has ever been blocked by Congress in the history of the Atomic Energy Act, and the procedural burden falls entirely on opponents.
Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who has led congressional opposition to the Saudi nuclear framework for years, issued his response within hours of the signing: “Let us be clear: allowing Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear weapons would be irresponsible and dangerous.” He called the agreement “Trump caving to the Saudis on nuclear nonproliferation.” Markey and Senator Jeff Merkley reintroduced the “No Nuclear Weapons for Saudi Arabia Act” on March 25, 2026, which would flip the congressional default by requiring affirmative approval from both chambers rather than passive acquiescence. The bill has not passed, and its path through a Republican-controlled Senate is nonexistent.
In the House, Representative Brad Sherman announced he will introduce a formal Resolution of Disapproval if the submitted agreement lacks Gold Standard requirements and Additional Protocol commitments — both of which the signed text has already been confirmed to omit. Sherman’s resolution would need a majority in both chambers and the votes to override a Trump veto, a threshold no nonproliferation resolution has ever cleared. Republicans control both chambers and have shown no appetite for handing the president a foreign policy defeat on a deal he has publicly framed as a commercial victory.
The political arithmetic is further shaped by the commercial dimension. Westinghouse, the primary American beneficiary of the agreement, employs workers in states represented by members of both parties, and the administration’s argument that blocking the deal would hand Saudi nuclear infrastructure to Russian and Chinese competitors has already been deployed against wavering members. Wright’s description of the agreement as “delivering prosperity at home and security to our allies abroad” was aimed at members of Congress who might otherwise have nonproliferation concerns but are reluctant to vote against domestic industrial interests. The congressional process is real, but the Atomic Energy Act’s pass-unless-disapproved default has never been overcome, and the votes to overcome it now are not there.
The Charge That Writes Itself
Iran has not issued a confirmed named-official statement responding specifically to the July 22 signing, but the charge circulates without needing Tehran to articulate it: the United States is conducting an aerial bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear infrastructure while simultaneously granting enrichment access to Iran’s principal regional adversary. IBTimes UK headlined its coverage “Hypocrisy Outrage as Trump Agrees to Saudi Nuclear Deal While Bombing Iran for Nuclear Enrichment,” and the juxtaposition is difficult to rebut because it is not a matter of interpretation — it is a description of what happened.
Tehran’s rhetorical preparation for this moment was completed years ago. In February 2019, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif publicly decried “US hypocrisy over planned nuclear sale to Saudis” when the deal was still a hypothetical framework under the first Trump administration. The argument that Washington enforces nonproliferation selectively — destroying one country’s enrichment program while building another’s — has been rehearsed, refined, and is now fully supported by the sequence of events. Iranian officials who invoke diplomacy in the morning while directing strikes by afternoon are not known for rhetorical restraint, and the 123 agreement hands them an argument that does not require exaggeration.
Several analysts have warned that the deal could push Iran further toward pursuing nuclear weapons, particularly as Tehran watches its chief regional rival receive the enrichment rights Iran has been denied and bombed for seeking. The Stimson Center’s Nour Eid has argued that Saudi Arabia’s nuclear decision-making is “structurally independent” from the outcome of the Iran war, driven more by “eroding US security guarantees” than by any specific Iranian program. If Eid is right, the Saudi deal was always coming regardless of what happened to Iran’s enrichment facilities.
But Iran has no reason to accept that framing, and every incentive not to. If Saudi Arabia can access enrichment under American supervision, and if Iran cannot access enrichment without American bombs, then the incentive to reach breakout capability before the Saudi facility becomes operational grows stronger — not because of ideology, but because of timing. The broader regional conflict that has already closed both of Saudi Arabia’s maritime trade corridors is the backdrop against which any Iranian nuclear acceleration would occur, and it is not a stable one.
The Prize Without the Price
Mohammed bin Salman told Fox News in September 2023 that the kingdom’s nuclear position was non-negotiable: “If they get one, we have to get one.” His Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz, had declared in January 2023 that Saudi Arabia intended to pursue “the entire nuclear fuel cycle,” including enrichment and fuel manufacturing. These were not diplomatic bluffs; they were public commitments from the crown prince and the minister who signed the July 22 agreement, and the 123 deal now provides the legal framework for both to be fulfilled.
The signing optics reinforced the message. Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan spent July 22 at the Cambridge Gulf Research Forum, delivering a speech about diplomacy as the “only path” to regional stability, while the most consequential bilateral agreement Riyadh has signed this year was routed through the Energy Ministry. The separation distanced the Foreign Ministry from the proliferation debate while the Energy Ministry captured the prize, presenting enrichment as an energy decision rather than a security one. Saudi Arabia’s broader effort to build security relationships across the region is carefully insulated from the nuclear question, and the ministerial routing of the signature ensures it stays that way.
The 123 agreement also creates a tension with one of its own justifications. The commercial argument for signing was that Saudi Arabia would pursue nuclear technology with or without American cooperation, and that US involvement would provide oversight and constraints that Russian or Chinese partnerships would not. The enrichment provision tests that argument directly, granting a capability that the oversight mechanisms — bilateral rather than multilateral, classified rather than transparent — may not be strong enough to constrain across a thirty-year timeline.
Blinken’s October 2023 trip to Riyadh was cancelled three days before it was scheduled because Hamas attacked on October 7. Three years of subsequent diplomacy never revived the framework that trip was meant to finalize. On July 22, 2026, the kingdom received the nuclear access, and the peace deal that was supposed to be the price remains unsigned.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Saudi Arabia build a nuclear weapon under this agreement?
The 123 agreement does not authorize weapons development, and the proposed enrichment facility would be built and operated by US companies without technology transfer to Saudi personnel. However, the agreement omits the Gold Standard enrichment ban that constrained the UAE, and MBS publicly stated in both 2018 and 2023 that the kingdom would match Iran’s nuclear capability if Iran developed a weapon. The path from civilian enrichment infrastructure to weapons-grade material is long but not foreclosed, and the bilateral safeguards arrangement that replaces the IAEA Additional Protocol remains unpublished — meaning independent assessment of its constraints is currently impossible.
What happens if Saudi Arabia violates the agreement’s terms?
The Atomic Energy Act includes termination provisions allowing the United States to withdraw nuclear cooperation if a partner state violates nonproliferation commitments. In practice, terminating a signed agreement with a major oil-producing ally during an active regional war would carry enormous economic and strategic costs that no administration would absorb lightly. The bilateral safeguards framework concentrates both the detection and enforcement burdens within the US-Saudi relationship, creating an inherent tension between the role of inspector and the role of ally that the multilateral IAEA system was specifically designed to avoid.
Could Russia or China have won the Saudi nuclear contract instead?
Both were actively competing. Russia’s Rosatom and China’s CNNC submitted bids for Saudi Arabia’s two planned 1.4-gigawatt reactors at Khor Duweihin, and Rosatom had a mid-July 2026 return to Saudi Arabia scheduled for further negotiations at the time CENTCOM struck the perimeter of Bushehr. The 123 agreement locks Saudi nuclear infrastructure into the American commercial ecosystem — primarily Westinghouse — for thirty years, making it extremely difficult for Russian or Chinese suppliers to re-enter the primary reactor program even if future political conditions change.
What is the Markey-Merkley Act and can it still block the deal?
The “No Nuclear Weapons for Saudi Arabia Act,” reintroduced by Senators Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley on March 25, 2026, would require affirmative congressional approval for any US-Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement, flipping the current pass-unless-disapproved default. Even if the bill passed — which is unlikely in a Republican-controlled Senate — it would face a presidential veto requiring a two-thirds override in both chambers. The legislation would need to be enacted before the ninety-day review clock expires, and the Markey-Merkley coalition does not currently have the votes for any step in that sequence.
Has the normalization track with Israel been permanently closed?
Not formally, but the engine that powered it is gone. The nuclear deal was the single most valuable inducement the United States could offer Saudi Arabia in exchange for recognizing Israel, and it has been delivered without that condition. Any future normalization push would require Washington to identify new leverage — defence commitments, arms packages, or trade terms — that Saudi Arabia actually wants and has not already secured through separate channels. The kingdom’s conditions since October 7 have also grown structurally harder: Palestinian statehood as a precondition for normalization is a demand that no plausible Israeli governing coalition currently appears willing to meet, and Saudi Arabia’s exclusion from active ceasefire and mediation tracks gives Riyadh little immediate incentive to offer concessions on Israeli recognition while it cannot secure a seat in the negotiations it considers more urgent.
Faisal bin Farhan’s July 23 diplomatic circuit — Greece, Qatar, Jordan — ran on a separate track from the nuclear file entirely: Athens Got the Call the Red Sea Could Not shows how the FM was pressing freedom-of-navigation guarantees through bilateral calls while tankers reversed from Saudi ports.
