President Donald Trump walks alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. The United States and Saudi Arabia have signed a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement, opening a legal pathway for American companies to participate in the kingdom’s emerging nuclear energy program. (The White House/Daniel Torok)

Don’t Mistake a US-Saudi Nuclear Cooperation Agreement for a Nuclear Project

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The agreement opens a carefully regulated legal pathway for American nuclear exports. It neither grants Saudi Arabia an enrichment capability nor materially advances a Saudi weapons program.

The new US-Saudi nuclear cooperation agreement has had an unusually confusing debut.

On July 22, the United States and Saudi Arabia signed an agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation pursuant to Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2153. The agreement was accompanied by two side letters and a separate arrangement providing for additional safeguards and verification measures. The package was then submitted to Congress for the review prescribed by the Atomic Energy Act.

One day later, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that the agreement would be “totally subject” to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel. He also declared that there would be “no enrichment of material.” The White House subsequently reinforced the first point, stating that without Saudi participation in the Abraham Accords, “the deal is off.”

Those statements have created understandable uncertainty about the agreement’s political future. Saudi Arabia has long maintained that normalization with Israel would require a credible pathway toward Palestinian statehood—a condition the current Israeli government appears unlikely to accept. Nor has the Trump administration explained how the president’s newly announced condition relates legally to an agreement the two governments had already negotiated and signed.

Whatever its force as a statement of presidential policy, a Truth Social post does not, without more, amend the text of a bilateral agreement already executed by the parties. The Trump administration might intend to withhold the steps necessary to bring the agreement into force, refuse the licenses and authorizations needed to implement it, obtain an additional Saudi commitment, or formally amend the negotiated package. For now, its intended course remains unclear.

But the resulting political drama should not obscure a more fundamental question: What does a Section 123 agreement actually do?

Much of the public criticism of the deal rests on a basic category error. A nuclear cooperation agreement is not a nuclear project. It does not give Saudi Arabia a reactor, an enrichment plant, or access to weapons-sensitive technology. It does not award a contract to Westinghouse or any other American company. It does not finance or authorize construction, transfer nuclear material, or compel the US government to approve a future export.

The agreement opens a gate. It does not determine what will eventually pass through it.

A Statutory Framework for Nuclear Cooperation with Saudi Arabia, not a Project Authorization

Section 123 establishes the legal prerequisites for significant peaceful nuclear cooperation between the United States and another country. Section 123(a) prescribes nine nonproliferation criteria that ordinarily must be incorporated into an agreement for cooperation before the United States may undertake the forms of nuclear cooperation specified elsewhere in the Atomic Energy Act.

Those criteria include guarantees that transferred material and equipment will not be used for nuclear explosives or other military purposes; the maintenance of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards; adequate physical security; restrictions on retransfers; US approval rights over reprocessing and other alterations in the form or content of covered nuclear material; controls on the storage of plutonium and highly enriched uranium; and limitations on the production of special nuclear material through the use of material or equipment subject to the agreement.

These requirements establish an enduring legal interest in what is often described as “US-obligated” material and equipment. American consent rights do not necessarily disappear when a physical export reaches the recipient state. They follow the material, equipment, and, in some circumstances, special nuclear material produced through their use.

What Section 123 does not do is authorize a particular commercial transaction. A 123 agreement removes a threshold statutory prohibition; it does not displace the transaction-specific licensing, consent, and export-control authorities through which the United States decides what cooperation may actually occur.

Exports of nuclear reactors, reactor components, source material, or special nuclear material would require separate licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) under 10 C.F.R. Part 110. Transfers of unclassified nuclear technology and assistance remain subject to Department of Energy controls under 10 C.F.R. Part 810. Reprocessing, enrichment, retransfers, and other post-export actions would require approval as “subsequent arrangements” under Section 131 of the Atomic Energy Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2160. Applicable transactions may also be subject to licensing requirements implemented by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security pursuant to the Export Control Reform Act of 2018, 50 U.S.C. §§ 4812–4813, through the Export Administration........

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