As Donald Trump continues his stop-start campaign to dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, and now also to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, history suggests that it was one of his predecessors, president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who helped lay the foundation for Tehran’s nuclear programme. When the United States signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran in 1957, it became the fourth country in the Middle East, after Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, to secure such a deal. Under Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ programme, the US supplied technical assistance, research equipment, a reactor and enriched uranium fuel. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology even established a graduate programme that trained Iranian nuclear engineers. Saudi Arabia, now among America's closest allies, had to wait nearly 70 years for a nuclear deal, one that could yet prove to be no agreement at all.
Trump's decision to offer Riyadh a sweeping civil nuclear deal stunned many observers, especially as it came in the middle of the war against Iran. The proposal appeared unusually generous, close to capabilities such as domestic uranium enrichment that Washington insists Iran should not possess. Then, within 24 hours, Trump changed course. He declared that the agreement would proceed only if Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords and recognised Israel, a condition Riyadh is never likely to accept. The episode highlighted a nuclear policy that shifts according to who Trump sees as a friend and who he chooses to confront.
The deal was not simply about helping Saudi Arabia diversify its energy mix. Trump clearly saw an opportunity to revive the American nuclear industry that has struggled for decades. The deal could attract contracts worth billions of dollars, with Westinghouse expected to supply AP1000 reactors to the kingdom. Although the US still operates more nuclear reactors than any other country, it has completed only a handful of new reactors since the 1990s, while China has expanded its fleet at remarkable speed. And the Saudi deal was supposed to change all that. "The administration has been pitching this agreement as a business proposition that will establish a legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar nuclear energy partnership with the kingdom," writes Jane Darby Menton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Strategic concerns reinforced the commercial logic. Washington feared that refusing Saudi Arabia access to advanced nuclear technology would simply push Riyadh towards Russia or China. The White House also saw the agreement as a way of repairing strains in a relationship unsettled by the fallout from the Iran war and restoring the traditional closeness that has long characterised US-Saudi ties.
Yet Trump’s triumph lasted barely a day. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman had barely finished signing the agreement on July 22 before Trump announced that it would be conditional. The reversal appeared to be driven less by strategic calculation than by political pressure. Fox News, Trump's preferred television network, and a critical Wall Street Journal editorial board questioned why Riyadh had received such generous terms—minimal international oversight, permission for enrichment—without offering the diplomatic recognition of Israel that Washington had sought under former president Joe Biden. Trump, reportedly upset with the Biden reference and also because Wright had announced the agreement without his final approval, responded in typically transactional fashion by attaching a new condition, hoping to blunt further criticism. The move caught Saudi officials, and even American negotiators, by surprise.
Yet the larger story lies not in the chaos surrounding the agreement, but in its substance. For critics, the Saudi deal exposed the double standards at the heart of Washington’s nuclear diplomacy. Even as the US targets the Iranian nuclear programme, the agreement with Riyadh opens the door to uranium enrichment on Saudi soil. The agreement does not require Saudi Arabia to adopt the International Atomic Energy Agency's additional protocol, the inspection mechanism that allows instant access to ensure that nuclear material is not diverted for military purposes. That represents a significant departure from previous American policy. When Washington concluded its civil nuclear agreement with the United Arab Emirates in 2009, it was hailed as the non-proliferation ‘gold standard’ because Abu Dhabi permanently renounced uranium enrichment and accepted comprehensive IAEA safeguards.
US officials have attempted to explain the contradiction away by arguing that any Saudi enrichment would occur within an American-operated "black box". Experts, however, dismiss the concept as unrealistic. No technical arrangement can ultimately prevent a sovereign state from exercising control over nuclear material located within its own territory. Riccardo Alcaro, research coordinator at the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, writes that the Saudi agreement creates a troubling precedent by allowing verification standards to be negotiated bilaterally instead of relying on internationally accepted norms. Washington, in effect, appears willing to adjust the rules according to the identity of its negotiating partner.
The implications extend far beyond one bilateral agreement. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has repeatedly stated that Saudi Arabia will seek a nuclear weapon if Iran acquires one. By granting Riyadh the building blocks of a complete nuclear fuel cycle without the safeguards imposed on the UAE, Washington risks accelerating precisely the regional nuclear competition it claims to oppose. Israel, whose undeclared nuclear monopoly has long been the backbone of its strategic position, has watched these developments with growing concern. More broadly, a lower non-proliferation threshold for Saudi Arabia could encourage Russia and China to offer similarly flexible arrangements to their partners, weakening the international non-proliferation regime.
The special deal offered to Saudi Arabia could also influence any peace deal to end the Iran war. Although US and Israeli strikes have inflicted significant damage on Iran's nuclear facilities, experts broadly agree there is no convincing evidence that the country's nuclear infrastructure has been permanently dismantled. "Any prospect for lasting peace therefore depends on a new nuclear agreement between Washington and Tehran. If a renewed ceasefire were to lead to a negotiation, Iran would consider the terms of the Saudi deal as the baseline," explains Alcaro. Tehran would have every reason to reject restrictions that are not applied consistently to others, especially in the region.
Despite Trump's repeated claims to have mastered the art of the deal, nuclear diplomacy has exposed the limits of his negotiating style. His first attempt with Iran, led largely by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, both real estate developers with no background in nuclear diplomacy, ended in the ongoing unpopular war. His Saudi initiative may yet become another failed negotiation.
The contrast with the Obama administration's approach could hardly be sharper. The negotiations in Switzerland that produced the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) relied not only on hard-nosed diplomacy but also on personal touch. When Ali Akbar Salehi, the MIT-trained head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, was tapped to assist foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Obama administration quietly brought energy secretary Ernest Moniz, himself an MIT graduate and nuclear physicist, into the American negotiating team. When Salehi was finishing his thesis on fast-neutron reactors at MIT in 1977, Moniz was a young nuclear scientist pursuing tenure there. The shared background proved invaluable as they played central roles in resolving some of the negotiations' most technically complex issues. During one marathon session in Lausanne, news came that Salehi's daughter gave birth to a son. Moniz surprised his Iranian counterpart with baby gifts from the official MIT gift shop. Salehi later returned from Tehran with traditional Iranian presents for Moniz's family.
Looking back, the JCPOA was about as good a nuclear deal as the US was ever going to get.
