Israel Was Added After the Deal

The most revealing fact about the US–Saudi nuclear agreement is not only what it may permit, but when Israel entered the arrangement. On July 22, the United States Department of Energy announced a decades-long nuclear partnership with Saudi Arabia, describing a 123 Agreement and an accompanying bilateral safeguards framework. The official statement spoke of American economic interests, energy security and nonproliferation, but did not say that the agreement depended on Saudi recognition of Israel or accession to the Abraham Accords. An agreement capable of transforming Israel’s strategic environment for a generation was therefore announced without Israel appearing as an explicit condition of its political architecture.

A day later, Donald Trump declared that the agreement was “totally subject” to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords and insisted that Riyadh would not be allowed to enrich uranium. Israeli reports then described intensive efforts by Jerusalem to restore normalization as a condition, including discussions involving Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Whatever may have been discussed privately before the announcement, the public sequence remains difficult to ignore: the agreement was signed, criticism followed, Israel intervened, and a new condition was added. What was subsequently presented as reassurance also revealed how little protection had been visible in the original arrangement.

This was not strategic mastery. It was post-facto damage control presented as diplomatic achievement. Netanyahu has spent years persuading Israelis that his personal access to Trump constitutes a strategic resource more valuable than ordinary diplomacy, institutional guarantees or predictable American policy. The Saudi agreement exposes the weakness of that doctrine. A government described as Israel’s closest friend announced a nuclear arrangement of immense regional significance, after which Israel had to fight to be inserted into the transaction.

A state that discovers its place in an agreement after the signing ceremony is not shaping the regional order. It is being positioned inside an order designed by others. Saudi Arabia received the prospect of a strategic technological program, American companies received access to major contracts, and Washington preserved the possibility of keeping Riyadh within the American orbit rather than allowing China or Russia to dominate its nuclear development. Israel was asked to provide the political legitimacy that could make the bargain easier to defend.

This is the real function of the normalization condition. It does not remove the proliferation risk; it gives the agreement an Israeli label. The Abraham Accords are being transformed from a framework of diplomatic recognition into a mechanism through which strategic concessions to Arab governments can be repackaged as gains for Israel. Another state receives technology, weapons, guarantees or political standing, while Israel receives the promise of........

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