The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it signed a “peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement” with Saudi Arabia.
The agreement provides a “legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances several priority economic and strategic objectives” and allows “great access for American companies in the Saudi nuclear energy program, benefiting American industry, workers and supply chains while helping to meet Saudi energy needs,” the U.S. Department of Energy said.
The agreement will go to Congress for review, according to the department.
Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, called the agreement “a serious, dangerous mistake.”
“The deal seems likely to lead to widespread nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East and redouble Iran’s determination to rapidly obtain nuclear weapons at all costs,” Klein said. “It is deeply dismaying that the administration is giving away the leverage of Saudi-Israel normalization while a nuclear Saudi Arabia would render America’s obligation to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge close to useless.”
“Iran’s nuclear program began under the U.S. ‘Atoms for Peace’ program when Iran was considered an American ally, yet Iran has evolved into a genocidal Islamist regime that repeatedly threatens America and its allies while pursuing nuclear weapons development,” he said. “Saudi Arabia has repeatedly aligned with Iran when it suited its interests, maintained an expanding strategic partnership with China and even refused to allow the U.S. to use Saudi bases during the 2025 war with Iran.”
He added that “Congress should reject this harmful, exceedingly dangerous U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal before it creates another irreversible national security disaster.”
Brian Romick, CEO and president of Democratic Majority for Israel, stated that the “decision to provide Saudi Arabia access to American civil nuclear technology without any meaningful progress toward normalization with Israel is a major strategic mistake.”
“President Trump is squandering the prospects for a historic breakthrough and an expansion of the Abraham Accords which would help create the conditions for Israel and a future Palestinian state to live side by side in peace and security,” Romick said. “This deal is also likely to be counterproductive to the administration’s pursuit of an agreement with Iran to curtail its own nuclear program.”
Victoria Coates, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s national security and foreign policy institute, stated that “countries in the Middle East not called Iran continue to draw closer to the United States.”
“This is the way to ample, clean power in the region,” she wrote.
