President Donald Trump declared on Thursday that the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement signed by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman on Wednesday will not move forward unless Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords, the series of normalisation agreements between Israel and Arab states brokered during his first term. “In order to do it, they have to be a member of the Abraham Accords,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, adding that the condition “was always understood” by both Washington and Riyadh. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president had not consulted Saudi officials before posting the demand on social media, but that the administration would continue talks.

Saudi Arabia has not publicly responded to Trump’s new condition. A source close to the Saudi government told journalist Laura Rosen, as reported by Khabar Online, that “the agreement is signed and there is nothing left to renegotiate” and that “tweets cannot cancel signed agreements.” Riyadh has long insisted it will not normalise relations with Israel without an irreversible pathway to an independent Palestinian state, a position that remains unchanged. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Trump’s condition, with his office calling Saudi membership in the Abraham Accords “a leap forward for peace in the Middle East,” according to Atlasinfo.

The deal itself, a 30-year partnership centred on Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor, has raised proliferation concerns because it does not require Saudi Arabia to forgo domestic uranium enrichment or to sign the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Additional Protocol allowing surprise inspections, according to multiple reports. Matthew Kroenig, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, described the potential US assistance in building an enrichment facility as “unprecedented in the history of US nuclear policy,” noting that no previous administration had helped another country build such a facility. Critics, including French research centre IFRI specialist Héloïse Fayet, have called the arrangement “destabilising” because it sends a message of an American double standard, given that the US and Israel recently attacked Iran in part to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

The agreement is now in limbo. It requires a 90-day review period in Congress, and the White House has not yet sent the required letters to lawmakers. Trump’s social media post on Thursday also claimed there would be “no enrichment of material” under the deal, a statement that contradicts earlier reports from US officials that the agreement includes a two-year study on the commercial viability of enrichment in Saudi Arabia. The future of the pact thus depends on whether Riyadh accepts a condition it has so far rejected, and whether the administration can resolve the internal confusion over what was actually signed.