![\"AFP\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/215802.jpeg\")
US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright (C-L) and Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman (C-R) exchange folders as US President Donald Trump (L) and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (R) look on.<\/p>\nOn 22 July 2026, the US Department of Energy announced that Washington and Riyadh had signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement. It took the Middle East largely by surprise because it appeared to allow uranium enrichment, whilst dispensing with the international atomic watchdog\u2019s snap inspection permissions.<\/p>\n
Signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi counterpart Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the US government called it the legal foundation for \u201ca decades-long partnership worth billions of dollars,\u201d advancing both economic and strategic goals, \u201cincluding nuclear non-proliferation\u201d.<\/p>\n
The clause that alarmed Israel sits deeper in the text. Unlike America\u2019s 2009 nuclear deal with the United Arab Emirates, which required Abu Dhabi to forgo both enrichment and reprocessing, this agreement omits the IAEA\u2019s Additional Protocol permitting snap inspections, while opening a pathway for uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing on Saudi soil.<\/p>\n
This is the nub of it: Saudi Arabia wants domestic enrichment. Saudi officials have long argued that if it is denied enrichment rights, it will turn to China or Russia instead, which apply looser non-proliferation standards. If it were simply about having nuclear energy, such a deal would have been signed decades ago, the US having been willing to offer nuclear cooperation under a \u2018gold standard\u2019 (a set of rules aimed at avoiding nuclear proliferation, which explicitly bans enrichment abroad).<\/p>\n
What Washington and Riyadh negotiated is an agreement that does not quite meet this standard, although it does include undisclosed guarantees. According to reports, under the arrangement, any enrichment facility would nominally be built and operated by American companies in a \u2018black box\u2019 configuration under tight controls. If Washington declines to proceed, Riyadh is barred from pursuing enrichment independently, or with another partner, for ten years.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright (C-L) and Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman (C-R) exchange folders as US President Donald Trump (L) and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (R) look on.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia\u2019s nuclear programme will be among the topics that Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to cover in his upcoming visit to Washington. Although quiet about the deal in public, he is likely to want further details as to what has been agreed. He may even seek to discreetly influence it retroactively.<\/p>\n
A bright red line<\/p>\n
While Netanyahu kept his counsel, most Israelis did not. Officials reacted with what an N12 diplomatic correspondent described as a \u201cgreat concern\u201d over the intention to permit uranium enrichment on Saudi territory, a move seen as crossing a red line. Israel, which is widely believed to have nuclear weapons, worries about the possibility of an uncontrolled nuclear arms race in the region.<\/p>\n
Although it does not view Saudi Arabia in the same way that it does Iran, Israel\u2019s security establishment knows that there are many aspiring nuclear powers in the region, including T\u00fcrkiye and Egypt, and that in the Middle East, yesterday\u2019s friends can easily become today\u2019s enemies. Enrichment capability, once established anywhere in the region, is treated as a strategically irreversible precedent.<\/p>\n
A senior Israeli official familiar with the negotiations told Israel\u2019s Channel 12 that enrichment on Saudi soil would be a danger to Israel\u2019s security, adding: \u201cThe silence of Israel\u2019s leadership is embarrassing, regardless of the normalisation question.\u201d The remark referenced a longstanding Israeli aim of normalising relations with Riyadh. The same official called a civilian enrichment facility \u201ca school for developing nuclear weapons,\u201d describing it as \u201ca bright red line\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 22 July 2026, the US Department of Energy announced that Washington and Riyadh had signed a civil…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-568130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}