Trump says Saudi Arabia must normalize Israel ties before nuclear deal is approved

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the nuclear deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia requires the kingdom to normalize relations with Israel, a significant condition not previously mentioned as the deal was announced. There will ⁠be “​no ⁠enrichment of ⁠material” under the agreement, Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday, adding that the deal signed one day before by the Energy Department “pertains only to non-military use.” He added that the deal “is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” the U.S.-brokered agreements aimed at normalizing relations with Israel that were forged during Trump’s first term and signed by several majority Muslim countries including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and later Sudan and Morocco. There was no mention of either stipulation when the Energy Department announced the deal on X on Wednesday, although the text of the deal was not released, and the Trump administration has not publicly outlined its details. The deal, which was signed by U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Saudi Minister of Energy His Royal Highness Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman but has not yet been approved by Congress, had stoked fears of further nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. An agreement to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia had previously been a U.S. requirement for any deal allowing the kingdom to enrich uranium, but the kingdom’s leaders have long insisted that would not be possible without meaningful progress toward a Palestinian state. The Energy Department said Wednesday that the agreements “lay the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances several priority economic and strategic objectives, including nuclear nonproliferation.” Earlier, a senior administration official told NBC News that Trump had approved the deal. It was not expected to require the most rigorous level of U.N. inspections or include a ban on uranium enrichment or reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, according to three people familiar with the agreement, who said the pact would allow U.S. companies to build a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia pending a joint U.S.-Saudi study examining whether such a step would be feasible.