Trump Sends Congress Saudi Nuclear Deal, Ties Approval to Israel Recognition

President Donald Trump sent Congress a proposed civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia on Monday, and an administration official told Reuters the deal will only go forward if Riyadh normalizes relations with Israel.

The agreement itself was reached in July. It would let U.S. companies export civilian nuclear technology to the kingdom, and it calls for the construction of AP1000 reactors over 30 years, a project worth tens of billions of dollars. The main beneficiary would be Westinghouse, which is jointly owned by Canada-based Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management.

Congress now has 90 session days to consider the pact. But the administration has attached a condition that sits outside the statutory review process entirely.

"The president's position has not changed that the agreement will only move forward if Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords," a U.S. official said in an email to Reuters.

The Abraham Accords, brokered during Trump's first term in 2020 and 2021, normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Saudi Arabia was never part of them. Trump worked on a Saudi-Israel track during his first term as well, and days after the July nuclear agreement was reached, he set normalization as a precondition for the deal taking effect. Joe Biden's administration had pursued a similar linkage while in office.

Diplomats believed Riyadh was close to normalizing relations with Israel in 2023, before Israel's war on Gaza began that October. Saudi Arabia has since demanded an irreversible path to a Palestinian state as a condition for recognizing Israel, a position that has not moved.

Reuters reported that it is not clear how sending the deal to Congress now, with the normalization condition still attached, is meant to advance that goal. The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

The episode is a clean instance of how Israel functions as a fixed variable in U.S. regional strategy rather than a party to be persuaded case by case. A nuclear technology transfer with direct financial stakes for a Canadian-and-U.S.-owned reactor manufacturer, and with implications for nonproliferation policy in the Gulf, has been made contingent on a foreign government's recognition of Israel, at a moment when that government has publicly tied its own position to a Palestinian state that does not exist. Congress's 90-day clock is now running on a deal the White House itself says cannot close under the condition it has set.