President Donald Trump’s meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) at the White House on Tuesday left a few major issues unresolved, including Trump’s desire for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords, and MBS’s hopes of acquiring American nuclear energy technology.
MBS told reporters after the meeting that he and Trump had a “healthy discussion” about the Abraham Accords and Trump agreed it was a “good talk,” but the Saudi leader signaled no actual change in his position.
“We want to be part of the Abraham Accords, but we want also to be sure that we secure a clear path of two-state solution. We’re going to work on that, to be sure that we can prepare the right situation as soon as possible,” he said.
“We want peace for the Israelis. We want peace for the Palestinians,” he said. “We want them to coexist peacefully in the region, and we will do our best to reach that date.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been adamant that the Palestinians will not be given a state after the aggression of October 7, 2023, and recent events have strongly suggested the Netanyahu government would not survive taking a step down the “path of a two-state solution,” that MBS discussed.
The Israeli government became embroiled in a political crisis last weekend after the United States backed a U.N. resolution that very tentatively suggested a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” might exist, provided the Palestinian Authority implemented some ambitious political reforms.
“Our opposition to a Palestinian state in any territory has not changed. Gaza will be demilitarized and Hamas will be disarmed, the easy way or the hard way. I do not need affirmations, tweets or lectures from anyone,” Netanyahu said in response on Sunday, venting his frustration with right-wing Israeli leaders who threatened to collapse his government immediately unless he firmly rebuked Palestinian statehood.
The Abraham Accords have four signatories to date, namely the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Saudi Arabia does not appear to be in a hurry to become the fifth, no matter how warmly the crown prince speaks of the idea. The Trump administration was evidently hoping Syria might become the fifth during President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House last week, but that did not happen, either.
The Economist noted on Tuesday that the Abraham Accords have proven to be quite durable – there was some tension during the Gaza war, but none of the existing members withdrew – so MBS knows he would be making a major commitment by signing on. There is considerable anecdotal evidence to suggest the Saudis really are interested in joining, but they feel it would be impossible without collecting Palestinian statehood as the price of admission.
Trump was equally noncommittal on the longstanding Saudi desire to obtain American nuclear energy technology.
“I could see that happening. It’s not urgent,” he said when a reporter asked about the prospect of such a deal.
The Saudis might see a nuclear deal as more urgent than Trump, given that they have been working on it since the Obama administration. Every American administration says it wants to make the deal happen, but it never does.
The Saudis are keenly interested in civilian nuclear power, and the U.S. government would very much like to see American companies building those reactors. Saudi Arabia has uranium to sell, and the U.S. wants to buy it and enrich it.
Any U.S. civilian nuclear deal would most likely include a promise that the Saudis would not enrich their own uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel, similar to the commitment made by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) when it opened the Barakah nuclear power plant, the first in the Arab world.
If the Saudis end up doing business with Russia or China on nuclear power, there might not be any guarantee of refraining from enrichment – which is the key capability for transitioning from civilian nuclear power to nuclear weapons.
The long-gestating nuclear deal is bound up in the Abraham Accords debate, as both the Biden and Trump administrations wanted Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel as the price for obtaining nuclear power technology, and the Saudis will not take that step until Palestinian statehood is addressed to their satisfaction.
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