President Donald Trump has approved a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia that could allow the kingdom to enrich its own fuel for civilian reactors without adopting the “gold standard” of international oversight, according to CNN. Two U.S. officials and a source familiar with the matter told the network the deal could be announced as soon as Wednesday.
The agreement would last 30 years and would involve American companies providing technology and expertise to build the Saudi program, CNN reported. Any agreement granting Saudi Arabia enrichment capability could prove controversial both domestically and across the Middle East, since the same technology used to produce reactor fuel can also be used to build a nuclear weapon.
The deal follows years of on-and-off negotiations that had previously been tied to a broader push for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, a condition Riyadh said it would not accept without meaningful progress toward a Palestinian state, according to NBC News. Energy Secretary Chris Wright discussed building out Saudi Arabia’s commercial nuclear power industry with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud, during a visit to the kingdom last year, shortly before Trump traveled there himself in May 2025.
Under the Atomic Energy Act, Congress will have 90 days of continuous session to review the agreement once it is formally submitted, and it will automatically take effect unless lawmakers pass a joint resolution of disapproval. NBC News reported that Congress would need a veto-proof majority to actually block the deal, a structural threshold that favors the White House over nonproliferation opponents on Capitol Hill.
