President Donald Trump has approved a 30-year civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that would allow the kingdom to enrich uranium and process spent nuclear fuel on its own soil, according to reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times on July 21, 2026, corroborated by Reuters and Al Jazeera on July 22 (WSJ, Al Jazeera).

Trump is expected to submit the agreement to Congress for approval, where lawmakers will have roughly 90 days to object before the pact takes effect (Reuters). The deal, valued in the tens of billions of dollars, would open Saudi Arabia's civilian nuclear sector to US companies including Westinghouse (WSJ podcast). Saudi Arabia would be permitted to pursue domestic uranium enrichment — the process of concentrating the specific type of uranium needed to fuel reactors — and, according to The Hill, potentially process plutonium as well, following a joint US-Saudi study (The Hill). Spent fuel reprocessing refers to extracting remaining usable material from fuel that has already been used in a reactor, which can include plutonium.

The reported agreement falls below the so-called "gold standard" established by the UAE's 2009 Section 123 Agreement with the United States. A Section 123 Agreement, named for the relevant section of US nuclear law, governs civilian nuclear cooperation between the US and another country. Under the UAE's version, the Emirates committed to forgo both uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing entirely — a voluntary restraint that became the benchmark for future deals. The Saudi pact may also not require the IAEA Additional Protocol, which grants inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency expanded verification authority to confirm nuclear material is not diverted for military purposes (Al Jazeera). Saudi Arabia did agree in 2023 to implement an arrangement giving UN atomic agency inspectors broader powers over nuclear activities, though the precise relationship between that commitment and the Additional Protocol in the current agreement remains unclear (WSJ).

Geopolitical analyst Michael Horowitz described the agreement as "very consequential" precisely because it falls below the gold standard and does not include the Additional Protocol (Al Jazeera). A Congressional Research Service report noted that the Trump administration has not released detailed plans for US-Saudi nuclear cooperation and that Congress has concerns about a US-run uranium enrichment operation in Saudi Arabia (CRS). As of July 22, the White House had issued no official statement, fact sheet, or press release on the deal.

The trajectory toward this agreement has been visible for months. During Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to the US in 2025, the two countries announced a framework for civilian nuclear cooperation. The Department of Energy cited the signing of a civil nuclear cooperation deal, with Secretary of Energy Chris Wright joining the Saudi energy minister, as one of the administration's nuclear achievements in its first year (DOE). At that time, in November 2025, Wright stated that uranium enrichment was not part of the civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia (Reuters.

By February 2026, Reuters reported that the US was removing the requirements that Saudi Arabia not enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel from the proposed deal (Reuters). A May 2026 Reuters report confirmed that the pact lacked the strictest guardrails Democratic lawmakers had demanded (Reuters). CNN reported on July 18 that the administration was moving toward a deal permitting enrichment (CNN).

Under the Biden administration, nuclear cooperation talks with Saudi Arabia were tied to a broader package that included Saudi recognition of Israel, according to The New York Times. The Trump administration revived the discussions and detached the Israel normalization requirement. Israeli officials had previously worked with the Biden administration on a proposal for a US-run uranium enrichment operation in Saudi Arabia as part of a potential normalization framework (WSJ). Netanyahu raised concerns with Trump about a potential US-Saudi nuclear reactor deal as far back as March 2018 (Axios).

The broader context here is a deliberate restructuring of nonproliferation thresholds in a region where the 123 Agreement's gold standard has served as the baseline for civil nuclear cooperation. Nonproliferation refers to the international effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and the thresholds in question are the diplomatic and legal guardrails that keep civilian nuclear programs from edging toward weapons capability. By permitting enrichment and potentially plutonium reprocessing on Saudi soil, the agreement would grant Riyadh a domestic fuel-cycle capability that the UAE explicitly renounced. Think of it as giving Saudi Arabia the keys to the entire nuclear fuel supply chain rather than asking it to buy fuel from outside suppliers. The omission of the Additional Protocol, if confirmed, would further narrow the verification architecture available to the IAEA — meaning fewer tools to independently confirm that Saudi Arabia's nuclear materials stay in civilian use. Whether Congress will accept these terms within the 90-day review window, and whether regional actors, particularly Israel, will treat the decoupling from normalization as acceptable, are the variables that will determine whether this framework survives the approval process. The precedent it sets for other US partners seeking similar terms is an additional factor that lawmakers weighing objection will have to weigh.