Congress should block Trump’s dangerous Saudi nuclear deal

Andrea Stricker | Oct 30, 2026

President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the U.S. – Saudi investment forum at the King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center, Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Photo by The White House – Flikr, Public Domain, Wikipedia

Behind the scenes of U.S. midterm races, another campaign is quietly taking shape. Congress is poised to vote on the Trump administration’s proposed nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, with both chambers expected to act during the week of Nov. 30. Democratic senators have introduced a joint resolution of disapproval to block the agreement during its required 90-day review period, and a companion House resolution, introduced on Sept. 14, is advancing as well.

The agreement would open the door to exporting U.S. uranium enrichment technology for the first time since the Manhattan Project. That marks a dangerous break with eight decades of bipartisan American nonproliferation policy — and with numerous statutes Congress itself has written. Lawmakers should oppose the agreement in its current form.

The bilateral deal, a “123 agreement” under Section 123 of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, would allow U.S. companies to build the kingdom’s first reactors. It would also authorize a joint study of up to two years on constructing U.S. uranium enrichment and conversion plants on Saudi soil — moving Riyadh closer to the material needed for nuclear weapons. Enrichment and plutonium reprocessing are the two primary pathways to nuclear weapons fuel, and most states that possess them keep them under tight control. Commercial opportunity is not a reason to abandon the long-standing American-led norm against their spread.

Since the first controlled chain reaction in 1942, Washington has generally kept sensitive nuclear know-how closely held. The main exception was wartime and postwar cooperation with the United Kingdom on gaseous-diffusion enrichment. The United States has otherwise never agreed in a bilateral nuclear cooperation pact to transfer sensitive fuel-making capabilities wholesale to a nonnuclear-weapon state.

This restraint developed over decades. It grew out of the 1953 Atoms for Peace initiative, the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group created after India’s 1974 nuclear test. The U.S. consented to limited reprocessing by Japan, Euratom, and India but has drawn a harder line on enrichment transfers.

In the 1970s, Washington pushed France and West Germany to limit sensitive exports. Congress then passed the 1978 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act. In the 1990s, amid proliferation efforts by Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, the U.S. pressed China and Russia to curb problematic transfers and helped develop the 1997 Model Additional Protocol to strengthen International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

These efforts helped keep the number of states mastering nuclear fuel-making technologies small. Today, just 14 to 15 countries worldwide enrich uranium and about 10 reprocess plutonium. Beyond the five NPT-recognized nuclear-weapon states (the U.S., France, the U.K., China, and Russia), and the four others that developed nuclear weapons (India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea), only Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands enrich or reprocess. Following recent U.S. and Israeli military strikes, Iran no longer enriches for its nuclear-weapons program.

Over more than 80 years of the atomic age, this record could have been far worse, thanks largely to supply-side controls and U.S. persistence. The Saudi deal risks undoing those achievements.

U.S. enrichment and conversion plants on Saudi soil would be vulnerable to seizure, espionage, and technology leakage. While media reports described “black box” arrangements to limit Saudi access, no such language appears in the transmitted text; the details are to be negotiated later. Lawmakers, therefore, cannot review what Riyadh would actually see or learn. The administration could possibly approve enrichment exports with limited further congressional review, depending on its reading of the Atomic Energy Act.

That is especially concerning given U.S. intelligence assessments that the kingdom has not ruled out nuclear weapons and past statements by the Saudi crown prince that he would seek them if Iran does. Possible official Saudi links to spying on U.S. artificial intelligence capabilities also raise alarm.

All of this would occur without Riyadh adopting the Additional Protocol — the IAEA’s strongest inspection tool, which permits access to sites engaged in covert nuclear-weapons work and is the overarching global standard, including for Washington. Of the partners with whom America has nuclear cooperation agreements, 51 have the Protocol in force; only two do not. The administration has instead accepted standard IAEA safeguards for Riyadh, supplemented by U.S. bilateral measures and shorter access times at certain “covered sites.” Those steps are unlikely to catch illicit work elsewhere.

The precedent for Russia and China may be the most consequential risk. Since the 1990s, Moscow and Beijing have largely restrained fuel-making transfers, recognizing the commercial value of the existing monopoly and seeking to avoid major U.S. nonproliferation sanctions. An American exception for Saudi Arabia could encourage them to offer similar capabilities in reactor deals with states unfriendly to Washington. Other countries in the unstable Middle East and beyond would seek similar capacities. Because fuel production is the hardest technical hurdle, multiple new states could end up on the threshold of nuclear-weapons capability.

Congress can stop this, but only if both parties act together. To halt the deal, both chambers must pass the resolutions of disapproval with a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto. With midterm elections behind them, when the votes are held, members may feel freer to oppose a dangerous deal. At a minimum, both chambers should hold hearings on the risks of proliferation. Given the kingdom’s refusal to normalize relations with Israel, as President Donald Trump has demanded, the administration could also withdraw the current text and negotiate stronger conditions before it takes effect.

A revised agreement need not sacrifice all commercial prospects. It could require the Additional Protocol and offer the Saudis a stake in an enrichment plant on U.S. soil to fuel American-built reactors in Saudi Arabia, along with attractive financing and training, in exchange for firm nonproliferation commitments and restraint from developing the full fuel cycle. Saudi refusal to these conditions should jeopardize U.S. military assistance.

For decades, U.S. policy has imposed strict conditions on nuclear cooperation and sought to limit or prohibit partners’ enrichment and reprocessing. Congress has long supported those goals on a bipartisan basis. An exception now for Saudi Arabia is not worth the risk to the nonproliferation regime.

Andrea Stricker is deputy director of the nonproliferation program and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. FDD is a Washington, D.C.-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.

Israpundit is entirely dependent on readers support. Please help me continue educating people with the truth about what is going on in Israel and around the world.

USD:

ILS:

CDN: