President Trump declared the newly signed U.S.-Saudi civilian nuclear agreement "totally subject" to Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords, a demand that blindsided analysts and allies less than 24 hours after the ink dried.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, signed the multibillion-dollar, decades-long agreement on Wednesday. Neither the Energy Department nor the Saudi government mentioned any conditions tied to Israel when they announced the deal. Then, on Thursday, Trump upended the narrative with a social media post declaring that "there will be no enrichment of material" and that the agreement hinges on Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reinforced the condition at a briefing the same day, telling reporters that if the Saudis don't join the Abraham Accords, "the deal is off." Asked why the condition never came up during Wednesday's signing, Leavitt said Trump "is always the final dealmaker."

That explanation left analysts and lawmakers with a blunt question: Was the Abraham Accords requirement part of the deal all along, or did the president add it after the fact?

A framework for civilian nuclear cooperation, with a two-year enrichment study attached

The agreement is known as a "123 Agreement," a type of bilateral pact that creates a legal framework for American companies to help a foreign country develop civilian nuclear power. A companion bilateral safeguards agreement was signed alongside it. The Energy Department said the deal "will create U.S. jobs, expand nuclear technology exports" and "reinforce global nonproliferation standards."

Under the terms, the two countries agreed to a two-year study to determine whether uranium enrichment is necessary for the Saudi program. That provision alarmed nonproliferation hawks. Just The News reported that the deal did not include the so-called "gold standard" non-enrichment pledge, because Saudi Arabia had rejected those terms.

Trump's Thursday post appeared designed to close that gap. His statement that the United States is "not opposed to Civil (Non-Enriched) Nuclear Facilities" drew a bright line against enrichment, at least on paper.

Andrea Stricker, deputy director of the nonproliferation program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that if Trump's no-enrichment language holds, "it is likely the United States will have control of an enrichment facility and a military or security presence." But she warned of a long-term risk:

"Yet this puts Washington and future presidents in the position of having to bomb their own enrichment plant if the Saudis decide to pursue nuclear weapons, whether using this technology or by working on them on their own."

That scenario, an American-built facility that a future administration might have to neutralize, captures the core tension in any civilian nuclear deal with a Gulf monarchy that has never signed the International Atomic Energy Agency's "additional protocol," which grants enhanced monitoring and inspections.

Sen. Kaine raises the UAE precedent; Rep. Bacon backs the safeguards

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, pointed to a prior 123 Agreement with the United Arab Emirates as the standard the Saudi deal should meet. The UAE agreed to follow the IAEA's additional protocol, a set of enhanced inspection rules designed to catch cheating early.

Kaine told reporters on Thursday:

"We did a civilian nuclear deal with the UAE, and they agreed to follow the additional protocol, which is very important to make sure if it's a peaceful program that there's no cheating, and it stays a peaceful program. So, the fact that the Saudis have apparently not agreed to that, I mean, it just kind of raises a red flag."

Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, took a more favorable view. He said he believed the deal now contains the right protections. "UAE has nuclear energy, I'm told, and other countries do. So, I think with the right safeguards, I think we'll be all right," Bacon told reporters.

Congress has a 90-day window to review the agreement. But that review process is limited, lawmakers cannot approve the deal, only oppose it. Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, described the dynamic bluntly: "It looks like Congress is involved, but Congress is behind the eight ball and can't do anything."

The broader Middle East picture adds pressure from every direction. Trump has navigated a volatile stretch in the region, including declaring the Iran ceasefire finished after Tehran struck American bases in the Gulf.

Analysts question whether the Abraham Accords demand was planned or improvised

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Hill that Trump appeared to be responding to criticism from pro-Israel voices and national security hawks who felt the administration gave too much away:

"This is the president trying to kind of backtrack and address the concerns from a lot of Israel supporters and hawks in general that we didn't get anything in return for this."

Clark argued that if the Abraham Accords condition had been baked into the original deal, the White House "would have taken credit for it right up front... because that is a big coup." Instead, he said, "It's clearly just trying to clean up the previous statement that they made with the agreement."

That reading matters because it shapes what comes next. Clark said he could see the agreement "staying in place and nothing substantive happening until Saudis agree to something" regarding Israel. In other words, the deal might sit on a shelf, signed but inert, while diplomats negotiate the harder question of normalization.

The challenge is enormous. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has long insisted that Riyadh will not normalize relations with Israel without concrete steps toward Palestinian statehood, a condition Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has rejected as a security threat, as the New York Post reported.

Netanyahu's office, for its part, welcomed Trump's push, calling Saudi Arabia's potential entry into the Abraham Accords "an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East." That statement carefully avoided the Palestinian statehood question.

Trump's maneuvering on the Saudi deal fits a broader pattern of using economic and security agreements as leverage across the region. His administration has also declared the U.S. the "Guardian" of the Strait of Hormuz and imposed tolls on cargo transiting the waterway, a move that asserted American dominance over the region's most critical shipping lane.

Robert Einhorn warns the condition may not last

Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who focuses on arms control and nonproliferation, offered a more skeptical read. He suggested Trump may know the Saudis won't agree to full normalization with Israel anytime soon, but that the demand itself creates bargaining room.

"He probably knows that he's not going to get Saudi normalization or willingness to normalize, but he may think that if he now drops that new condition, he could get something for it, perhaps something having to do with enrichment or verification or something like that."

Einhorn also said the announcement appeared to catch everyone off guard, not just the Saudis, but Trump's own team. "I think it's clear that not only did he catch the Saudis by surprise, he probably caught all of his principal advisers in the administration by surprise," he said.

On the deal's nonproliferation safeguards, Einhorn was measured but unconvinced. "The critics have been pretty clear in identifying some of their concerns and whether the administration is prepared to address those concerns in a convincing way, I'm not so sure," he said.

Most pointedly, Einhorn questioned whether Trump's Abraham Accords condition would stick. "I wouldn't be confident that these new conditions will persist for very long," he said. "You know, this would not be the first time that the president has tweeted something out like this, and then later reversed himself."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, framed the deal in competitive terms. "We're not the only show in town, but we're the best show in town. We want to make sure that it's our companies they're picking," Rubio said, underscoring the administration's argument that if the U.S. doesn't help the Saudis build civilian nuclear capacity, Russia or China will.

That competitive logic has force. But it doesn't resolve the nonproliferation concerns, and it doesn't answer whether the Abraham Accords demand is a genuine precondition or an opening bid that gets quietly dropped once the political heat fades.

Trump has shown a willingness to pause aggressive action in the region before. He halted a planned military strike on Iran earlier this year at the request of Gulf allies, citing active negotiations. The question now is whether this latest pause, conditioning a signed deal on a diplomatic outcome that may take years, reflects the same strategic patience or a different calculation entirely.

Sherman, the California Democrat, captured the ambient uncertainty: "You never know whether Trump's serious about anything."

Stricker, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies analyst, offered a more constructive take. She said Trump's comments "may, helpfully, serve to delay the agreement from coming to fruition, since it was already signed and the Saudis now have to address whether they want to normalize relations with Israel." Delay, in the nonproliferation world, can be its own form of safeguard.

The tensions between the U.S. and Israel over Iran policy have simmered throughout this period. Trump himself has acknowledged the difficulty of managing the relationship, saying publicly that he must keep Netanyahu "a little bit sane" as the two leaders navigate competing priorities in the region.

The Hill reached out to the Saudi Embassy in Washington for comment on Trump's Abraham Accords condition. No response was reported.

Clark, the Hudson Institute fellow, noted that countries pursuing civilian nuclear enrichment "almost always have a secondary motive of starting the process of creating a latent capability to build their own nuclear weapon." That reality, not any particular distrust of Riyadh, is why the enrichment question matters so much.

Ninety days, one condition, and no clear path forward

Congress now has its 90-day review window. Lawmakers can raise objections but cannot block the agreement outright. The Saudis must decide whether the prize of American nuclear technology is worth the political cost of recognizing Israel, a step that would put Riyadh at odds with decades of its own stated policy on Palestinian statehood.

Trump, for his part, has planted a flag. Whether it stays planted is another matter. The deal is signed. The condition came after. And the distance between the two may end up defining whether this agreement produces American jobs and energy exports, or joins the long list of Middle East frameworks that looked good on paper and went nowhere.

A president who wants credit for the deal and credit for the condition will eventually have to choose which one he's willing to lose.