President Donald Trump said on July 24, 2026 that Saudi Arabia should normalise ties with Israel, repeating a condition he first set out the day before on social media. That condition links the newly signed US-Saudi civil nuclear cooperation agreement to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords — the series of agreements brokered in 2020 under which several Arab states established diplomatic relations with Israel. His remarks came two days after the nuclear deal was signed on July 22.

Asked by a reporter on Friday, Trump repeated his demand that Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords as a prerequisite for the nuclear agreement. The Times of Israel reported that Trump also said normalisation "will occur at some point" (Times of Israel). Al Jazeera published its account of the remarks the same day (Al Jazeera).

The sequence unfolded over three days. On July 22, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed the civil nuclear cooperation deal. On July 23, Trump announced on social media that normalisation with Israel was a condition attached to the agreement. On July 24, he confirmed that position in response to a reporter's question.

Trump also addressed the non-proliferation dimension of the deal. He stated on July 24 that "there will be no enrichment of material" regarding the Saudi nuclear arrangement — meaning Saudi Arabia would not be allowed to enrich uranium domestically, which is the process that can produce fuel for both civilian reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons. The deal is expected to last 30 years and will be submitted to Congress for review, according to Al Jazeera's reporting.

A notable gap emerged in the policy chain. Trump said on July 24 that he did not discuss the Abraham Accords condition with Energy Secretary Chris Wright before the nuclear deal was signed. The White House briefings and statements page, as of July 21, carried no statement, transcript, or press release related to Saudi Arabia, Israel normalisation, or the nuclear deal on its first page. The most recent item listed there was dated July 21, one day before the deal signing.

Saudi Arabia had not responded to Trump's July 24 statement tying the nuclear deal to Israel normalisation as of the Al Jazeera article's publication. The specific format in which Trump delivered his Friday remarks was not named in the Al Jazeera report, which described the exchange only as Trump being "asked on Friday."

The broader context here matters for assessing what this deal structure means for regional diplomacy. By attaching an Israel normalisation condition to a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, the administration has linked two policy tracks that Saudi Arabia has historically treated as separate. Saudi officials have long conditioned normalisation with Israel on tangible progress toward Palestinian statehood — a position that predates the current administration's proposal. The nuclear deal, with its 30-year horizon and congressional review requirement, gives the arrangement institutional weight beyond a single presidential term.

The no-enrichment commitment, if enforced through the agreement's terms and monitoring by the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body that inspects nuclear facilities), would align the Saudi arrangement with what the United States calls the "gold standard" for non-proliferation. This framework, set under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, requires partner countries to forgo uranium enrichment and reprocessing. It matters because Riyadh has previously signaled interest in keeping enrichment capability as a hedge against regional proliferation risks, particularly given Iran's nuclear program.

Trump's disclosure that he did not coordinate the normalisation condition with Energy Secretary Wright before signing raises questions about the interagency process. The Energy Department traditionally leads on Section 123 agreement negotiations, and the introduction of a foreign-policy condition from the White House without prior consultation with the lead agency suggests either a deliberate sequencing choice or an ad hoc decision that may complicate congressional review.

Looking at what this means for the congressional review period, lawmakers will now evaluate an agreement that the president himself has described as conditional on a separate diplomatic outcome that has not been achieved. Senators and representatives who might otherwise support civil nuclear cooperation on its merits will have to weigh whether voting to approve the deal effectively endorses the linkage to Abraham Accords expansion. Saudi silence in the immediate aftermath compounds the uncertainty, as Riyadh has neither accepted nor rejected the condition publicly.

The 30-year duration of the agreement means that whatever terms Congress approves would bind successive administrations and shape US-Saudi nuclear cooperation well into the 2050s. If the normalisation condition survives congressional review without modification, it would set a precedent for conditioning future nuclear cooperation agreements on unrelated diplomatic goals — a structural shift in how the United States uses nuclear cooperation as a foreign policy tool.