Editor’s note: This is a developing story that will be updated.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration signed a landmark cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia to develop a civilian nuclear energy program. The 30-year, multibillion-dollar deal will give U.S. companies—particularly Westinghouse—exclusivity in developing the kingdom’s nuclear infrastructure while cutting off international competitors.
The nuclear cooperation agreement, also known as a “123 agreement” after Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954, controls the transfer of nuclear material or technology from the United States for peaceful uses. Saudi Arabia is hardly the only country to have signed such a deal with the United States, which has 26 of them currently in place. But previous U.S. administrations had resisted concluding one with Saudi Arabia because the kingdom insisted on developing domestic uranium enrichment.
While details have not yet been officially released, the new agreement could potentially open the door to Saudi enrichment without international oversight. (It should be noted that the details of the deal are still not clear and keep changing. As of press time, President Donald Trump had just announced that the U.S.-Saudi nuclear energy deal is “subject to” the Saudis normalizing relations with Israel—something which was not mentioned in the Trump administration’s previous announcement.)
Fueling proliferation. The U.S.-Saudi agreement comes from a U.S. administration that doesn’t seem to worry about the spread of uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing. In May 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing its administration to “aggressively pursue at least 20 new 123 Agreements” by the end of 2028 and to “aggressively renegotiate” those set to expire. Then, back-to-back late last year, the U.S. administration explicitly supported domestic enrichment and reprocessing in South Korea after a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and gave advance notice of (or “pre-announced,” in Washington-speak) the deal with Saudi Arabia during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington.
“This policy reverses 50 years of U.S. leadership in the global nonproliferation architecture,” said Thomas Countryman, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation.
Now that Washington has opened the gate of uranium enrichment in Saudi Arabia, other Middle Eastern countries with which Washington has had 123 agreements—the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, and Egypt—are likely to make similar demands, potentially leading to several proliferation fronts in the region. Of these countries, only the agreement with the UAE includes the IAEA’s Additional Protocol as a condition of supply of U.S. nuclear materials and permanently prohibits enrichment and reprocessing facilities within its national borders, a condition so rigorous about nuclear non-proliferation that it is frequently referred to as the “gold standard.”
“Given that it’s outside the Additional Protocols, [the deal] will have deleterious effects on arms control,” Rachel Bronson, a Bulletin senior advisor and a senior fellow with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said. “It could motivate the UAE to rethink their 123 agreement—legally within the text.” The UAE agreement includes the possibility of reviewing the deal, including “to take into account regional and international nonproliferation developments.”
“This doesn’t mean that the UAE will want to renegotiate,” adds Bronson.
But part of the motivation for the UAE agreeing to the ‘gold standard’ was to show Iran in particular, but Saudi [Arabia] too, that there was a way forward on civilian nuclear power in the Middle East that did not require enrichment.
Turkey and Egypt, however, have no such constraints.
Although under its 123 agreement, Turkey cannot use U.S. nuclear material or technology to carry out domestic enrichment without Washington’s explicit authorization, Ankara did not legally forfeit its right to enrich uranium in perpetuity. Egypt’s agreement with the United States expired in 2021, and Cairo is now turning to Russia for supplying nuclear material and technology.
The deal “increases the risk of other countries pursuing enrichment and reprocessing as part of building a latent nuclear weapons capacity,” said Countryman, who led negotiations of previous 123 agreements.
Double (not gold) standard. Many observers pointed to the diverging U.S. policy toward Iran and Saudi Arabia. “The [United States] never allowed Iran to do this,” Nicole Grajewski, an Iran expert and professor at Sciences Po Paris, reacted on X to the announcement. “All of the fuel for Iran’s reactors [is] enriched abroad (partly due to Russian insistence),” Grajewski said, adding that “Saudi [Arabia] doesn’t have a nuclear reactor yet.”
Asked by a former Israeli ambassador to the United States why he was not supporting this deal, Jon Wolfsthal, a former White House official and former member of the Bulletin Science and Security Board, responded:
I am not opposed to any deal but I do not trust this admin to produce a good deal.
The U.S.-Saudi cooperation agreement “sounds a lot different from the standard 123 deal,” Wolfsthal further elaborated in The New Republic.
This raises concerns that Saudi Arabia is using its close financial ties to the Trump family to manipulate U.S. cooperation to pursue a nuclear weapon option, especially if Iran continues to be a nuclear threshold state.
If many experts were expecting a U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal, most were caught by surprise at the Trump administration’s reported concessions, which they see as undermining national security and nonproliferation efforts.
“As someone who does believe in both the U.S. civil nuclear program and the value of American cooperation in other countries’ development of peaceful nuclear use, I am nevertheless deeply opposed to this deal with Saudi Arabia,” Laura Kennedy, a former U.S. Representative to the Conference on Disarmament and Acting U.S. Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said.
To agree to any nuclear cooperation without that partner accepting the absolute minimum of the Additional Protocol under the IAEA would be antithetical to U.S. national security interests and would set a dangerous precedent throughout this volatile region including efforts to prevent Iran [from] acquiring nuclear weapons.
The IAEA’s Additional Protocol has become the gold standard of nuclear transparency. It complements the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements, expanding the agency’s inspection and information rights, including to facilities not directly related to declared nuclear activities. Although the Additional Protocol’s signing is voluntary, Iran signed it as part of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Saudi Arabia has not.
“The United States is in the middle of a war with Iran,” Amb. Bonnie Jenkins, a former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said.
The administration continues to claim time and time again that we ‘cannot allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,’ and yet … we are agreeing to a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.
Risk of a Middle East arms race. Many experts worry the decision could now stir a new arms race between the two main powers in the Middle East that are animated by a decades-long, deep-seated rivalry.
On Thursday morning, President Trump attempted to clarify in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that the agreement includes no enrichment of material. “Trump post bears almost no relation to what just got signed,” Matt Bunn, the faculty chair of Harvard University’s Managing the Atom project, wrote in his reaction on Bluesky.
“At this stage, the United States appears to favor a system in which it would conduct some of the inspections itself,” Nour Eid, an independent researcher on nuclear energy and non-proliferation, explains, based on the limited public information about the deal.
However, this mechanism would only concern facilities covered by the U.S.-Saudi agreement and would not replace the IAEA’s broader verification regime, leaving potential areas of uncertainty.
The lack of transparency and uncertainty could create dangerous loopholes. States parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) have a right to develop a civilian nuclear program, including uranium enrichment. But that right “must be accompanied by a rigorous and credible inspection regime to ensure that these activities remain exclusively peaceful and to avoid any ambiguity,” Eid said.
What comes next. The Trump administration reportedly plans to seek approval from Congress, which would have 90 days to review the text once it receives it. But some lawmakers already expressed their concerns over the agreement. “Today’s Trump-Saudi nuclear deal is terrible policy,” Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat from California, wrote on Bluesky.
It abandons ‘Gold Standard’ safeguards which increases the risk of uranium enrichment, nuclear proliferation, and a Middle East regional arms race.
Tom Moore, a former staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on X that the Trump administration may have precipitated the submission of the agreement to Congress now because of the way the 90 days are counted by the Atomic Energy Act. “Congress has 90 days of continuous session to consider the 123,” Moore explains, adding that “any calendar days on which either the House or Senate is each adjourned for more than three days are not counted in the 90 days.” If continuity is broken by too many adjournments, the review of the U.S.-Saudi 123 agreement could extend until after the midterm elections in November.
On Thursday, President Trump said, in a new twist, that the U.S.-Saudi nuclear agreement would be “totally subject to” the kingdom joining the Abraham Accords. The new requirement, which comes after Saudi Arabia already signed the agreement, would require Riyadh to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, possibly running the deal into a dead end before it reaches the Senate’s floor.