President Trump declared that a newly finalized U.S.-Saudi civilian nuclear agreement hinges on Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel, a demand Riyadh has so far resisted without a clear path to Palestinian statehood.
One day after the Energy Department announced the nuclear cooperation pact, Trump posted on Truth Social that the deal "will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords." The condition had not appeared in the original announcement, and the Daily Mail reported that the kingdom had not publicly responded to Trump's demand.
The move ties two of the administration's biggest diplomatic priorities together: civilian nuclear cooperation with the Gulf's most powerful Arab state, and an expansion of the normalization framework Trump first brokered during his first term. If Riyadh signs on, it would represent the most consequential addition to the Accords since their inception, and hand Trump a foreign-policy achievement that eluded every previous administration.
Trump announced the nuclear agreement on Wednesday, framing it as a win for American industry and nonproliferation. He said the deal involves "no enrichment of material" and "pertains only to non-military use." But AP News reported that the agreement does not include the International Atomic Energy Agency's "additional protocol", the enhanced monitoring and inspection regime that arms-control experts consider the gold standard for verifying a country's nuclear activities.
AP also reported that the deal could allow for the construction of a uranium-enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia following a joint U.S.-Saudi study, a provision that raised immediate nonproliferation concerns on Capitol Hill and among nuclear-policy analysts. The full text of the agreement has not been publicly disclosed.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the arrangement in practical terms. As we previously reported, Rubio has pledged the deal will not open the door to proliferation.
Rubio framed the competition bluntly:
"We're not the only show in town, but we're the best show in town. We want to make sure that it's our companies they're picking."
That argument carries weight. If the United States walks away from civilian nuclear cooperation with the Saudis, Russia and China are standing in line. American companies lose the contracts, and Washington loses the leverage that comes with being the technology provider.
Trump's Abraham Accords condition puts the ball squarely in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's court, and the crown prince has made his position plain. Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler has privately signaled that Riyadh cannot recognize Israel without a concrete pathway to Palestinian statehood, a demand that has only hardened since the devastation in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Trump and MBS have reached a tentative agreement for Saudi Arabia to join the Accords, with the crown prince stating publicly for the first time:
"We want to be part of the Abraham Accords. But we want to be sure we secure a clear path towards a two-state solution."
Trump, for his part, expressed confidence that Israel would accept the terms. "Israel's aware, and they're going to be very happy," he said. The Free Beacon also reported that the broader package is expected to include a sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, a major sweetener for Riyadh and a sign of how much strategic weight the administration is putting behind the deal.
This is not the first time Trump has tried to use diplomatic leverage to pull Saudi Arabia into the Accords. In May, he attempted to condition an Iran peace deal on Saudi normalization with Israel. Riyadh rebuffed the attempt.
The Abraham Accords were signed at the White House on September 15, 2020, during Trump's first term. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and special envoy for peace, architected the agreements, which brought the UAE and Bahrain into formal diplomatic relations with Israel. Morocco and Sudan followed that same year, and Kazakhstan became the first post-Soviet state to join in 2024.
But Saudi Arabia, the Arab world's largest economy and the custodian of Islam's two holiest cities, has remained on the sideline. As the Washington Examiner noted, the Accords remain deeply unpopular among many Arabs. Asher Fredman, Israel's director for the Abraham Accords, acknowledged the gap between governments and their publics:
"It appears that there is a sense among parts of the population that the Accords have not directly benefited them."
That popular resistance is one reason MBS has moved cautiously. Signing a normalization pact with Israel while Gaza's civilian toll mounts would carry domestic political risk even for an absolute monarch.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also warned about the nuclear dimension of regional instability. In a previous statement, he said that if Iran develops a nuclear weapon, "we will follow suit as soon as possible." The remark underscores why Washington wants to be the one shaping Saudi Arabia's nuclear future, and why the stakes of this deal extend well beyond commercial contracts.
The Saudi nuclear deal is only one piece of a wider diplomatic campaign. Fox News reported that Trump publicly called on Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, and Jordan, in addition to Saudi Arabia, to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Iran deal framework.
Trump posted on Truth Social that after "all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum, simultaneously, sign onto the Abraham Accords." He went further, floating the idea that Iran itself could eventually join the normalization pact, a notion that would have been unthinkable even a year ago.
That ambition reflects the scale of the broader Middle East peace framework Trump has laid out, one that ties the Iran nuclear negotiations, Abraham Accords expansion, and Gulf state security guarantees into a single diplomatic architecture.
Fox News noted that U.S. and Israeli officials do not expect the UAE to move forward on expansion of the Accords until after Israel's September elections, a reminder that the timeline depends on more than just American pressure.
The New York Post reported that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump's after-the-fact addition of the Abraham Accords condition. "The president is always the final dealmaker, as you know," Leavitt said, a line that acknowledged the Energy Department had signed the nuclear agreement without publicly disclosing the Israel normalization prerequisite.
That sequencing matters. The Energy Department finalized the deal without mentioning the condition. Trump added it the next day on social media. Whether that reflects a deliberate negotiating strategy, announce the deal, then raise the price, or an improvised add-on is an open question the administration has not answered.
What is clear is that Trump is using every available lever to achieve something no president has managed: bringing Saudi Arabia into a formal peace with Israel. The nuclear deal gives him a carrot. The Abraham Accords condition gives him a stick. And the broader diplomatic architecture he is building, linking Iran, the Gulf states, and Israel into a single framework, gives the whole effort a scope that matches the risk.
MBS has said he wants in. He has also said he needs a path to Palestinian statehood first. Trump says Israel will be happy. None of those claims have been tested against a signed document yet.
The Middle East has no shortage of leaders who said they were close to a deal. What it lacks is leaders willing to close one. Trump is betting he can force the question, and that the answer, when it comes, will be yes.
