The deal awaiting presidential signature would give Riyadh access to enrichment similar to Iran’s
The US has agreed to allow Saudi Arabia to have its own nuclear program and enrich uranium, CNN has reported, citing draft documents and sources familiar with the negotiations. The draft deal has been negotiated and is awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature, the outlet wrote on Saturday.
According to the report, the agreement would not require the enhanced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards known as the Additional Protocol, which gives inspectors broader access to nuclear facilities and is designed to help detect undeclared nuclear activities.
The reported deal would give the Saudis access to the same uranium-enrichment technology that has been at the center of Iran’s decades-long dispute with the West. Washington and Israel have long argued that Tehran’s enrichment program could be used to produce nuclear weapons and cited those concerns when launching strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure earlier this year.
Tehran has consistently maintained that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful and that as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it has an “inalienable right” to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. Iran provisionally applied the IAEA’ Additional Protocol, allowing inspectors broader access than required under standard safeguards.
Saudi Arabia has long sought a nuclear industry, saying it wants to develop domestic uranium resources, diversify its energy mix, free up more crude oil for export, and power industrial and desalination projects. Riyadh has also argued that, as an NPT signatory, it has the same right as other member states to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
The reported agreement would mark a departure from Washington’s long-standing “gold standard” approach to civilian nuclear cooperation. In 2009, the United Arab Emirates permanently renounced uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing in exchange for American nuclear cooperation. The agreement has since been promoted by successive US administrations as a model for nuclear partnerships in the Middle East.
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Arms-control experts cited by CNN warned that allowing Saudi Arabia to pursue enrichment could weaken the “gold standard” and encourage other countries in the region to seek similar rights. They also argued that domestic enrichment gives a country a latent weapons capability, since the same centrifuge technology used to produce reactor fuel can also produce weapons-grade uranium if enrichment continues to higher levels.
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