Israeli officials warn US-Saudi deal could lead to nuclear weapons, discourage Israel normalization

A potential US civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, reportedly advanced by the Trump administration, is raising concerns among Israeli and American officials. Critics fear the deal, which would assist Saudi Arabia in building civilian nuclear energy plants with uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing capabilities, could enable the kingdom to develop nuclear weapons. This arrangement, if finalized without stringent oversight or a normalization agreement with Israel, could also remove a key incentive for Saudi Arabia to establish open ties with the Jewish state.

• Former Israeli defense ministers Avigdor Liberman and Benny Gantz warned that such a deal could spark a regional arms race, with Liberman stating, "a civilian nuclear program in Saudi Arabia will end with nuclear weapons [production] and lead to a mad arms race across the entire Middle East."
• Yair Golan, former IDF major general, criticized providing nuclear capabilities "without stringent monitoring requirements and without a framework of relations with Israel as a condition creates a dangerous reality for the State of Israel."
• The deal is seen by some as abandoning a crucial point of leverage for advancing Israeli-Saudi normalization, which had been a goal of both the Trump and Biden administrations.