A classified US intelligence assessment recently provided to Congress has concluded that Saudi Arabia has not ruled out developing a nuclear weapons programme. The findings, reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times, have intensified concerns about President Donald Trump’s civilian nuclear cooperation pact with Riyadh.
The civil nuclear deal between the US and Saudi Arabia, also known as a 123 Agreement, confirmed in July, allows American companies to pursue tens of billions of dollars in civilian nuclear projects inside Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration has argued the pact is essential to keep Riyadh from turning to Russia or China for nuclear infrastructure. In Congress, a 90-day review period is underway.
Critics point out that the agreement does not mandate the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Additional Protocol, which grants inspectors snap access to unannounced facilities to verify that nuclear material is not being diverted for military purposes. Instead, oversight functions through a bilateral framework negotiated directly between Washington and Riyadh.
The text of the agreement dictates that American firms will only build an enrichment plant after a joint US-Saudi economic and technical feasibility review formally justifies it. To maintain non-proliferation control without using the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, the facility is expected to use a “blackbox” framework whereby a US consortium will own, secure, and physically manage the centrifuge technology inside Saudi borders.
Democratic Lawmakers, led by Senators Ed Markey and Jeff Merkley have written to Secretary of State Marco Rubio accusing the administration of giving to Saudi demands, adopting looser restrictions, and abandoning non-proliferation precedent.
While Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman insists that the kingdom’s nuclear ambitions remain entirely peaceful, transparent, and compliant with international frameworks, Saudi officials publicly warned in 2018 that, if Iran develops a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia will feel compelled to do the same.
The deal may, in any event, be dead in the water because following the signing of the agreement, the White House added a prerequisite requiring Saudi Arabia to sign the Abraham Accords, effectively normalising relations with Israel – something Riyadh is certain to reject as it would generate both regional and internal protests.
Nevertheless, the wider concern is that, whether or not the Agreement goes ahead, the very framing of it may have seriously undermined long-standing non-proliferation principles including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Experts worry that without the Additional Protocol, the IAEA will have no way of verifying whether Saudi Arabia is secretly developing a nuclear weapon at undeclared facilities. “This should not be acceptable in the case of a country like Saudi Arabia that seeks the capabilities to produce fissile material and has threatened to pursue nuclear weapons,” wrote a group of 20 nuclear non-proliferation experts, including former IAEA director general Hans Blix, in a letter to Congress.
Jean-François Seznec notes in a recent Responsible Statecraft article that Saudi Arabia has grown increasingly frustrated by the US conditioning civilian nuclear cooperation on diplomatic normalisation with Israel. Consequently, Saudi Arabia is actively diversifying its security architecture through alternative mechanisms such as the Mecca Agreement, a mutual defence pact recently signed with Pakistan and Turkey, and deeper strategic ties with China. He says, faced with Saudi Arabia’s hedging towards China, the US may have overhauled its traditional non-proliferation playbook.
Yoel Guzansky and Eldad Shavit argue in a July 2026 article for the Institute of National Security Studies (INSS) that the US is deliberately shifting from non-proliferation prevention to long-term risk management by leveraging civilian nuclear cooperation to lock Saudi Arabia into its strategic orbit. Rather than insisting that Saudi Arabia forgo domestic fuel-cycle capabilities and driving it toward Chinese or Russian suppliers, the US seeks to build multi-decade institutional dependence through fuel provision, technology transfers, workforce training and regulatory oversight.
According to Cauvery Ganapathy in a recent Observer Research Foundation (ORF) article, US-Saudi Nuclear Deal: Implications of Strategic Exceptions, the US-Saudi agreement exemplifies strategic exceptionalism driven by regional leverage. While the pact reflects double standards compared with historical scrutiny and sanctions imposed on Iran, she states the US is acting strictly in its national interests: offering nuclear concessions to counter Chinese courtship, maintain long-term alignment and cajole Saudi Arabia into normalising relations with Israel.
“The sheer prerogatives that the Trump Administration has arbitrarily exercised to allow for a pathway to uranium enrichment without any adherence to proliferation safeguards thus makes the impact of the Saudi deal on the global nuclear landscape more immediate,” she says.
She warns that by bypassing the IAEA’s Additional Protocols, the US risks prompting regional competitors like the United Arab Emirates to renegotiate their own binding enrichment bans under the 2009 “Gold Standard” agreement.
“The Emirati decision to forgo the right to enrichment and commit to internationally-recognised principles of non-proliferation is a demonstration in principle to not just the Iranians – who are engaged in a decades-long struggle to be allowed the right to enrichment despite their insistence that their nuclear programme is a peaceful, civilian electricity-oriented one – but the region as a whole that the power of the atom can be harnessed without it necessarily devolving into nuclear proliferation. Should the US’ arbitrary and unequal implementations of civil nuclear cooperation agreements lead to potential reversal of the Gold Standard by the UAE, a country long committed to the ethos of non-proliferation, it would qualify as an abject failure on the part of the global nuclear regime to have safeguarded its fundamental principles.”
She concludes: “The willingness of the US to selectively circumvent the non-proliferation architecture that it previously guarded qualifies as an arbitrary implementation of the global nuclear regime, despite the strategic motivations that may have informed the trade-off.… In the easing of its proliferation standards the US – and the international community – would do well to remember the old international affairs adage: In this realm, there are no permanent friends or foes, only permanent interests. It is a dictum that may resonate more in the future should patterns of friendship change. It is then that the arbitrary easing of non-proliferation protocols without the institution of adequate guardrails will exact its true cost.”
Similar concerns were expressed by Michael Duitsman in an article published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, The US-Saudi Nuclear Deal: Abandoning the Gold Standard.
“Donald Trump is famous for his love of gold. His agreement with Saudi Arabia, however, has undermined the so-called “Gold Standard” for nuclear nonproliferation: the American insistence, for more than a decade, that countries that reach agreements with Washington for nuclear cooperation forgo domestic uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing,” he notes.
He adds that the agreement deviates from the established norms of American non-proliferation policy in ways that significantly undermine decades of previous work. “Even worse, American industry is ill-equipped to deliver the uranium enrichment technology that Saudi Arabia wants, meaning these diplomatic concessions could produce very little economic benefit.”
According to Duitsman, “The administration’s ultimate concession to Saudi Arabia on this issue raises significant proliferation concerns. Not only does it open the door for Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium with US approval, it also calls into question the durability of other countries’ agreements to forgo enrichment as part of their 123 Agreements.”
He points out that, while Westinghouse and GE design reactors, they do not manufacture many of the parts. “Some of the most important reactor components require specialised manufacturing capabilities that don’t exist domestically”. For example, Plant Vogtle 3&4 use reactor vessels and steam generators made in South Korea and pressurisers made in Italy.
The enrichment situation is even more woeful,” he states. “The primary uranium enrichment facility operating in the US is part of Urenco, a European company, and uses European centrifuge technology. Centrus… operates a demonstration cascade, and is planning to expand, but has limited commercial operational experience. BWX is working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to scale up the DEUCE centrifuge for defence purposes, but is only just beginning to build manufacturing capacity. Peter Thiel-backed General Matter intends to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel, but it’s unclear whether the company has built anything.”
He concludes: “The US nuclear industry has struggled for relevance and profitability in the twenty-first century. Nuclear renaissances have repeatedly failed to materialize. The Saudi 123 Agreement, however, does not offer any respite, as US industry is not prepared to supply what Saudi Arabia wants.… Instead of a boon to US nuclear industry and diplomacy, Saudi Arabia’s 123 Agreement is a black mark, endangering decades of US non-proliferation policy and diplomatic efforts.”
