The Legal Framework That Could Save — or Doom — the Middle East
On July 23, 2026, President Donald Trump formally submitted a 30-year civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia to Congress for review. To the untrained eye, this might look like routine diplomatic paperwork. But buried within this submission lies one of the most consequential nonproliferation battles in modern American history — a fight that will determine whether the Middle East descends into a nuclear arms race or maintains the fragile balance that has prevented atomic catastrophe for decades.
The instrument Trump sent to Capitol Hill is known as a “123 Agreement,” named after Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 — a law written when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president and the nuclear age was still in its infancy. This 70-year-old statute remains the primary legal gatekeeper controlling which nations can receive American nuclear technology, materials, and know-how. It requires the president to certify that any nuclear cooperation agreement meets nine strict nonproliferation criteria before it can take effect.
But here is where the story takes a dark turn. The Trump administration’s proposed agreement with Saudi Arabia appears to fall short of the safeguards that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have long demanded — safeguards that were considered non-negotiable until now.
The Gold Standard: From Sacred Principle to Negotiable Bargaining Chip
For years, the holy grail of American nuclear diplomacy has been something called the “Gold Standard.” This is not a precious metal — it is a set of ironclad commitments that recipient nations make to forgo uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing on their own soil. These two technologies are the twin gateways to nuclear weapons production. Enrichment spins uranium into bomb-grade fuel; reprocessing extracts weapons-usable plutonium from spent reactor fuel. A country that masters either capability holds the keys to the nuclear kingdom.
The United Arab Emirates accepted this Gold Standard in 2009 when it signed its own 123 Agreement with Washington. Taiwan did the same. Both nations agreed to import enriched uranium rather than produce it domestically, accepting a permanent ceiling on their nuclear ambitions in exchange for American partnership. It was a model of nonproliferation diplomacy — a trade of sovereignty for security that kept dangerous technologies out of volatile regions.
But Saudi Arabia refused to play by these rules. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, made his position crystal clear in a 2018 interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes: “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.” Those words were not the cautious hedging of a diplomat — they were the naked threat of a regional powerbroker who saw nuclear capability as a non-negotiable element of national prestige and survival.
For years, this threat kept negotiations deadlocked. The Obama administration balked. The Biden administration insisted on linking any nuclear deal to Saudi normalization with Israel. But the Trump administration, in its second term, appears to have broken the impasse by simply abandoning the Gold Standard altogether.
The Missing Safeguard: Why the IAEA Additional Protocol Matters
If the absence of the Gold Standard is alarming, the reported lack of an IAEA Additional Protocol is nothing short of terrifying. This is where the technical details of nuclear diplomacy become matters of life and death — not just for the Middle East, but for global security.
The Additional Protocol is an expanded safeguards agreement developed in the 1990s in the wake of two catastrophic intelligence failures: Iraq’s covert nuclear weapons program, which was hidden in plain sight for years, and North Korea’s successful deception of international inspectors. The standard safeguards required by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) only allow the IAEA to inspect declared nuclear facilities — the reactors and enrichment plants that countries voluntarily disclose. But determined proliferators can simply build secret facilities elsewhere, as Iraq did at Tuwaitha and North Korea did at Yongbyon.
The Additional Protocol closes these gaps. It grants the IAEA authority to conduct snap inspections at undeclared locations, access sites that support the nuclear program but don’t house nuclear materials (such as centrifuge production facilities), and obtain additional information about a country’s entire nuclear supply chain. As of 2025, 144 nations had implemented the Additional Protocol — a testament to its acceptance as the international gold standard for nuclear transparency.
Saudi Arabia has not. And according to a report the Trump administration sent to Congress in late November 2025 — obtained by the Arms Control Association — the proposed 123 agreement does not require the kingdom to adopt it.
This is not just a procedural omission. It is a fundamental breach of American nonproliferation policy that has been championed by presidents of both parties for nearly three decades. The United States has consistently pushed the Additional Protocol as a condition for nuclear cooperation, advocating for its universal adoption in forums around the world. To waive it for Saudi Arabia — a nation that has openly threatened to develop nuclear weapons — is to tear down the very architecture of international nuclear safeguards.
The Legal Workaround: How Trump Bypassed His Own Law
The question arises: how can the Trump administration legally submit a 123 agreement without the Additional Protocol when the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act explicitly prohibits it?
The answer lies in a waiver provision buried within Section 1264 of that law. The statute states that the president cannot submit the required Nuclear Proliferation Assessment Statement (NPAS) to Congress unless a state has implemented an Additional Protocol — but this requirement can be waived if the president submits a report to congressional committees describing how the agreement advances American national security interests without contributing to nuclear proliferation.
Trump submitted exactly such a report around November 24, 2025 — one week after announcing the framework agreement during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House. The report makes a series of claims that nonproliferation experts find deeply troubling.
According to the Arms Control Association’s analysis, the report argues that U.S.-Saudi nuclear cooperation will “prevent strategic competition from seizing an opportunity to undermine United States national security interests for decades to come” and will help “reestablish our leadership in the global civilian nuclear energy market.” It asserts that the proposed agreement “will significantly reduce the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation” and that American involvement will increase transparency.
But the report fails to explain how a bilateral safeguards agreement — negotiated between Washington and Riyadh with IAEA “involvement” — can match the thoroughness and intrusiveness of the Additional Protocol. It does not clarify what “unique terms” are included. It does not address how the United States would respond if Saudi Arabia misuses transferred technologies. And it suggests that the bilateral agreement may only apply at “locations at which sensitive United States-Saudi civil nuclear cooperation would occur” — raising the chilling possibility that nuclear sites not part of the cooperative program could operate without meaningful oversight.
The Enrichment Question: What the Deal Really Allows
Perhaps the most explosive aspect of the proposed agreement is what it implies about uranium enrichment. The administration’s report does not explicitly state that Saudi Arabia will be permitted to operate a domestic enrichment program. But the language leaves little room for doubt.
The report states that the bilateral safeguards agreement will employ “additional safeguards and verification measures to the most proliferation sensitive areas of potential nuclear cooperation between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States (enrichment, conversion, fuel fabrication, and reprocessing).” It further notes that “nuclear material, equipment, or components will not be transferred to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia subject to the 123 agreement until the proposed Bilateral Safeguards Agreement has entered into force.”
Read carefully, this is a conditional green light. Once the bilateral agreement is in place — and the Trump administration is clearly confident it will be — the door opens for Saudi Arabia to acquire enrichment technology, possibly even directly from the United States. The report conspicuously fails to specify the scope, conditions, or limits of any enrichment program. Will it be restricted to low-enriched uranium for civilian reactors? Will Saudi personnel be trained in enrichment techniques that could be diverted to weapons production? Will the kingdom be allowed to stockpile enriched uranium?
These are not academic questions. They are the difference between a civilian energy program and a latent weapons capability. And the Trump administration’s report answers none of them.
The Congressional Clock: 90 Days to Save Nonproliferation
Under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, Congress now has 90 days of continuous session to review the proposed agreement. After that period, the agreement automatically becomes law unless Congress adopts a joint resolution opposing it — a resolution that would then face the nearly insurmountable hurdle of a presidential veto, requiring a two-thirds majority in both houses to override.
