Inside US-Saudi nuclear deal: Trump opens critical door in Middle East; why Pakistan is biggest loser
The nuclear map of the Middle East and South Asia is set to be redrawn after the US signed a historic 30-year civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, opening a potential pathway for domestic uranium enrichment on Saudi soil under American technical oversight.It is a move driven as much by US president Donald Trump’s worldview and domestic politics as by the administration’s long-term design to lock Saudi Arabia into an American-led security architecture while keeping China and Russia out of the kingdom’s atomic future.While Washington frames the move as a triumph of commercial strategy and security integration, the broader regional fallout paints a starkly different picture.Above all, Pakistan emerges as the ultimate strategic loser.For decades, Islamabad enjoyed a unique position of leverage as the custodian of the Islamic world’s only operational atomic arsenal. The US-Saudi pact fundamentally dismantles that monopoly, marginalises Pakistan’s leverage over Riyadh, and accelerates a tri-polar nuclear reality across West Asia featuring Israel, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
The US-Saudi nuclear pact
The new 30‑year US-Saudi civil nuclear cooperation agreement authorises American companies to help Riyadh build reactors, transfer advanced nuclear technology and cooperate on the fuel cycle, including potentially sensitive stages such as uranium enrichment.Unlike the so‑called “gold standard” deal with the UAE, which explicitly forswore enrichment and reprocessing, the Saudi arrangement loosens long‑standing US non‑proliferation guardrails, opening the door to domestic enrichment on Saudi soil after a defined period.
The new 30‑year US-Saudi deal authorises American companies to help Riyadh build reactors, transfer advanced tech and cooperate on the fuel cycle.
Arms control experts note that under the agreed framework, Washington and Riyadh will conduct a study on the commercial viability of enrichment in the kingdom; if justified, the US would build a so‑called “black box” enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia and retain nominal control of the technology.But even conservative analyses concede that after about 10 years, Saudi Arabia would be free to develop indigenous enrichment capabilities or turn to alternative suppliers if it chose to move beyond civilian use, creating a latent weapons option.Like all signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Saudi Arabia has already committed to not developing an atomic bomb and consented to international inspections. But Washington has traditionally sought extra protections.Almost all of the 26 nuclear cooperation agreements the US has inked so far included what’s known as an “additional protocol” signed with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This means the IAEA can thoroughly inspect all nuclear facilities.
The Saudi arrangement loosens long‑standing US non‑proliferation guardrails.
However, its latest pact with Saudi Arabia does not include an “additional protocol” of extra international oversight.
Atoms & alignment
For the Trump administration, the deal is a convergence of ideology, grand strategy and industrial policy.At one level, it reflects Trump’s transactional approach: major nuclear contracts for US firms, billions in potential reactor and fuel deals, and a promise to “bring back” America’s nuclear industry in the face of competition from China, Russia, France and South Korea.At a deeper level, the agreement is a tool to anchor Saudi Arabia irreversibly in a US‑centric orbit, at a time when Riyadh has flirted with Chinese and Russian nuclear offers and diversified its security partnerships.By tying Saudi Arabia’s most sensitive technology to American hardware, standards and oversight, Trump is betting that the kingdom’s energy transition, defence modernisation and even future deterrent posture will remain structurally dependent on Washington, not Beijing or Moscow.Should the pact fail, even at this late stage, countries with established nuclear industries have expressed interest or are seen as potential partners for Saudi Arabia’s nuclear programme.State-owned China National Nuclear Corp (CNNC) reportedly submitted a bid in 2023 to construct a nuclear plant.Russia’s state nuclear firm Rosatom, which built a nuclear plant in Egypt, has also signed preliminary cooperation agreements with Riyadh. Other potential contenders include South Korea, which built reactors in the neighbouring United Arab Emirates, and France.The choice of partner will likely depend on technological offerings, financing, and geopolitical alignment, including conditions related to nuclear fuel handling.
The Israel rider
A distinctive feature of Trump’s nuclear diplomacy is the embedding of the Saudi deal within a broader vision of “mandatory Abraham Accords” – in effect, requiring Riyadh’s normalisation with Israel as the political price of accessing the nuclear package.Reporting from US and Israeli outlets indicates that Trump has pushed to make Saudi participation in an expanded Abraham framework a condition for full implementation of the nuclear agreement.
Trump has said the Saudi nuclear pact hinges on the kingdom joining the Abraham Accords.
In this logic, nuclear cooperation is leverage: the carrot that nudges Saudi Arabia into a formal strategic alignment with Israel against Iran, while delivering Trump a signature diplomatic trophy he can sell to his domestic base and donors.It also allows the administration to present the nuclear deal not as an isolated proliferation risk but as part of a grand bargain – peace with Israel and a stronger anti‑Iran coalition under American leadership.Saudi Arabia has so far not responded to the claim.However, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that if Riyadh does not join the Abraham Accords “the deal is off”.
Managing the inevitable
Trump’s advisors have long argued that Saudi Arabia’s nuclear ambitions are a given, not a variable.Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has publicly stated that if Iran gets a bomb, Saudi Arabia will quickly follow, signalling that the kingdom views a nuclear hedge as a necessary insurance policy in a deteriorating security environment.In that context, the administration’s internal justification is that it is better to channel Saudi nuclear development through a US‑supervised framework than to push Riyadh into the arms of Chinese or Russian suppliers, who would likely impose weaker safeguards.In other words, Washington is not trying to prevent Saudi Arabia from ever acquiring a latent nuclear option; it is trying to ensure that, if and when such an option matures, it emerges within a system where the US has maximum visibility, contractual leverage and political influence.
Pakistan left out in the cold
Until now Pakistan has had the rare distinction of being the only nuclear-armed Islamic state. That status bolstered its self-image as a protector of the Muslim world, reinforced by decades of defence ties with Saudi Arabia.For years analysts feared Riyadh might one day lean on Pakistan for a deterrent: weapons, technology, or a tacit shield. A 2025 mutual-defence pact, whose language hinted Pakistani nuclear assets could aid Saudi Arabia in extremis, seemed to confirm that risk.The US-Saudi nuclear framework changes the calculus. First, it expects Saudi nuclear activity to be placed under IAEA safeguards tied to US-origin technology, which makes any covert Pakistani role far riskier and politically costly for Riyadh. Second, as Saudi Arabia deepens ties with India and embraces US-led economic corridors like the India-Middle East-Europe route, a tight Saudi-Pakistan axis looks less likely.
Countries with nuclear stockpiles.
For Pakistan, the consequences are both symbolic and practical. The bomb has long been a source of pride, parity with India, and a claim to leadership in the Islamic ummah. If Saudi Arabia develops its own nuclear infrastructure, Pakistan’s claim to be the sole Muslim nuclear power will become time-bound and hollow. Gulf states gaining independent nuclear paths reduce Islamabad’s ability to monetise or politicise its nuclear expertise.Over time Pakistan risks being seen not as the indispensable Muslim nuclear state but as one among several — and arguably the weakest economically, with the heaviest proliferation baggage from the AQ Khan era.Pakistan’s complicated ties with Washington and Beijing also limit its ability to act as a nuclear supplier or trainer for Riyadh.Symbolically, the US-Saudi deal completes a shift that began when Gulf monarchies warmed to India and Israel: they now prioritise economics and technology and prefer partnerships with Washington, New Delhi and Tel Aviv over outsourcing deterrence to Pakistan. If, within a decade, Saudi Arabia runs advanced enrichment and reactor infrastructure based on US technology, the centre of gravity for “Islamic nuclear power” will have moved from South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula.
A future nuclear triangle
Looking out over the next decade, the logic of the Trump-Saudi arrangement points towards a West Asia where three key states: Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia – either possess or are a short sprint away from nuclear weapons.Israel is already widely believed to maintain an undeclared but operational nuclear arsenal, under a longstanding policy of opacity.Iran, despite dithering on nuclear agreements, has substantially advanced its enrichment capabilities and possesses a short “breakout” timeline to a bomb if it chooses.Saudi Arabia, under the new deal, acquires the legal, technical and industrial scaffolding of a civil programme that can, over time, be repurposed into a weapons‑relevant capability, especially if Iran crosses the nuclear weapons threshold.The 10‑year horizon embedded in the agreement – after which Riyadh faces fewer constraints on seeking alternative enrichment partners – is precisely the sort of timeline in which a latent nuclear option could mature into a credible deterrent.This triangular nuclear geometry would mark a historic departure from the era when Israel alone held a nuclear monopoly in the region.It also risks a cascade effect, with other regional players – Turkey, Egypt, even the UAE – reassessing whether they can remain non‑nuclear.Critically, this approach shifts US non‑proliferation policy from prevention to hierarchy.Instead of insisting that no new state in West Asia should get enrichment or weapons‑relevant technology, Washington is implicitly endorsing a tiered order: friendly states may have latent capabilities within a regulated framework; adversaries like Iran must be constrained; and global rivals like China and Russia are to be excluded from building those capabilities.This is a radical break from the “gold standard” approach and explains why arms control advocates accuse the deal of “compromising essential non‑proliferation guardrails”.
A critical point
If the trajectory outlined in the US-Saudi deal holds, West Asia in the mid‑2030s could feature three central nuclear players: Israel with its established but undeclared arsenal; Iran with a short or accomplished breakout capability; and Saudi Arabia with a US‑incubated nuclear infrastructure capable of swift militarisation in a crisis.Around this triangle, American forces and bases would operate as both deterrent and guarantor, even as China and Russia seek entry points through alternative energy and defence deals.In that triangle, Pakistan is conspicuous not by its presence but by its relative absence.Once the only Islamic state with the bomb, it risks becoming a peripheral nuclear power in a region whose atomic future is being rewritten by Washington and Riyadh – a future in which the most consequential Islamic nuclear story may not be the one Pakistan told about itself in 1998, but the one Saudi Arabia writes under American supervision a decade from now.
