The United States is moving toward a nuclear-energy agreement with Saudi Arabia that would let the kingdom enrich uranium on its own territory, a step that has long been contentious, Al Jazeera reports. President Trump has approved the deal and is expected to seek approval from Congress.
What is proposed
The core of the agreement is what it would permit Saudi Arabia to do, and where.
According to Al Jazeera, the reported 30-year agreement would allow Saudi Arabia to pursue domestic uranium enrichment, following a joint US-Saudi study, with US companies including Westinghouse helping to build the kingdom's civilian nuclear sector. Al Jazeera reports that the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported on Tuesday that the discussions had reached this stage.
The detail that matters is "on its own soil." A country can run nuclear power plants using fuel enriched elsewhere. Enriching uranium domestically is the sensitive part, because the same technology that produces low-enriched fuel for reactors can, pushed further, produce the highly enriched uranium used in weapons. That dual-use quality is why domestic enrichment is the line that non-proliferation agreements most often draw.
Why experts are worried
The objection is not that Saudi Arabia would get nuclear power, but the terms on which it would.
Al Jazeera reports that non-proliferation experts believe the deal falls below the standard the US itself set in the region. The comparison they draw is with the United Arab Emirates, whose 2009 "123 Agreement" with the US prohibited enrichment entirely and became known as the "gold standard." A Saudi deal that permits enrichment, and which Al Jazeera reports may not require the International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol, the arrangement that gives inspectors broader powers to verify a country's program, would sit below that bar.
One analyst, Michael Horowitz, put it plainly, saying the US "reportedly agreed to a deal that falls both below the gold standard" and lacks comprehensive safeguards. The concern is precedent as much as Saudi Arabia specifically: a weaker standard for one country can become the standard others demand.
The politics behind it
The deal also marks a shift in how Washington has linked nuclear cooperation to regional diplomacy.
Al Jazeera reports that under President Biden, nuclear negotiations with Saudi Arabia were tied to the kingdom recognizing Israel, but those talks stalled after the war in Gaza. The Trump administration, it reports, removed that condition and revived the discussions, so the nuclear agreement is now being pursued separately from the question of Saudi-Israeli normalization.
What happens next
The agreement is not final, and there is a check on it.
Al Jazeera reports that Congress can block the deal with a two-thirds majority, and that lawmakers from both parties are expected to scrutinize the enrichment safeguards. That sets up the next phase: a debate in Washington over whether the terms are strong enough, weighed against the commercial and strategic appeal of binding Saudi Arabia's nuclear future to American companies and oversight rather than to someone else's. We have reported the reported terms and the objections to them; the judgment on whether they are acceptable now falls to Congress.
