The US-Saudi nuclear agreement can advance American economic and strategic interests while giving Washington greater leverage over Riyadh’s nuclear ambitions.

The Trump administration is right to sign the US-Saudi Arabia civil nuclear cooperation agreement and should submit the deal to Congress. The announcement has prompted controversy, especially surrounding its reported acceptance of a possible future Saudi uranium enrichment program. US officials should understand that walking away from the deal—or allowing it to collapse—will undermine US interests and weaken US leverage.

Minimizing nonproliferation risk is an extremely important American national interest, and questions about a potential Saudi enrichment capability are appropriate. When the Trump administration submits the agreement to Congress, the text will answer some questions and raise others. Administration officials should be prepared to answer them.

Their departure point should be US national interests. In addition to America’s national security interest to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons, and especially to prevent their use, the United States has several other important and extremely important national interests at stake.

US-Saudi Nuclear Cooperation Would Advance American Economic Interests 

Most obvious are America’s economic, commercial, and technological interests. Selling US nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia would create thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue while also promoting US technology and technical standards. Building reactors in Saudi Arabia can also help American firms to establish the supply chains, domestic manufacturing capacity, and scale necessary to drive down costs domestically, making energy more affordable, as well as to compete internationally. 

Critically, however, nuclear energy cooperation isn’t just about selling reactors—it’s also about selling ongoing services—such as maintenance—as well as fuel and spare parts. Because nuclear reactors can operate safely for 60-80 years, if not longer, they lock in these commercial gains while creating deep and durable relationships. That includes a critical human dimension through the training and collaboration of engineers, operators, and other key personnel. 

Their combined technological sensitivity and commercial endurance imbue these relationships with a strategic character. For this reason, selling nuclear reactors is a key arena of geopolitical competition. 

Russia and China Are Winning the Global Nuclear Energy Competition 

America faces grave challenges. Russia has a dominant role as both an exporter of nuclear reactors and as a provider of enrichment services; Russia’s state company Rosatom has won $200 billion in orders, mostly for nuclear power plants, and holds about 40 percent of global uranium enrichment capacity. The United States is far behind. 

The second challenge is China’s remarkable domestic nuclear power program—its companies are building 37 reactors—and its impressive capability. Once China begins significant reactor exports, it will be a very tough competitor with proven technology, established supply chains, and low costs. 

Worse, China’s and Russia’s state-owned enterprises can put together comprehensive deals with cheap financing and many other advantages. 

Nuclear Cooperation Gives Washington Greater Leverage 

With all this in mind, the Trump administration and Congress should consider three fundamental realities.

First, enrichment is a guaranteed right under the Nonproliferation Treaty. It is not obvious that Saudi leaders are willing to give up this right and, accordingly, if the United States insists on that—particularly after having negotiated and signed an agreement that reportedly allows it under certain conditions—this could collapse the deal and push Riyadh to work with others, even though this would clearly be Saudi Arabia’s second choice. 

Second, Washington has been negotiating and signing civil nuclear agreements for 70 years and has agreements with about 50 countries. We have finished the easy ones. If we want to compete with China and with Russia in the other 140 countries, we will need to do the hard deals. If we don’t, our adversaries will capture these markets. America will lose the economic and strategic benefits, and the world’s nuclear engineers will train in Chinese and Russian institutes.

Finally, as President Donald Trump understands quite well, leverage underlies America’s ability to get what it wants, and we can create leverage that we don’t have. 

Imagine our worst-case scenario: a country, not Saudi Arabia, wants a civil nuclear agreement precisely to develop a nuclear weapons capability and its leaders conceal this from their US counterparts. 

Will Washington have greater leverage if American officials reject a deal including enrichment or demand intrusive conditions, driving that government into a strategic relationship with a US adversary that would help to shield them from sanctions or other American pressure, or if they take the deal and thereby secure greater visibility into that country’s nuclear program while obtaining the ability to take away, or threaten to take away, some of what we have provided? The latter is better for America and for US allies too.

For too long, the United States has sacrificed concrete and achievable gains in pursuit of nebulous and unrealistic objectives. This tendency has been especially troublesome in the Middle East, a region that highlights choices policymakers prefer to avoid. Through a civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, President Trump and Congress have a substantial opportunity to strengthen America’s strategic position in the Middle East, to reap significant economic and technological benefits, and to amass new leverage that Washington doesn’t have today. They should take it. 

About the Author: Paul J. Saunders 

Paul J. Saunders is president of the Center for the National Interest and publisher of The National Interest. His expertise spans US foreign and security policy, energy security and climate change, US-Russia relations and Russian foreign policy, and US relations with Japan and South Korea. Saunders is a senior advisor at the Energy Innovation Reform Project, where he served as president from 2019 to 2024. He has been a member of EIRP’s board of directors since 2013 and served as chairman from 2014 to 2019. At EIRP, Saunders has focused on the collision between great-power competition and the energy transition, including issues such as energy security, energy technology competition, and climate policy in a divided world. His recent projects at EIRP have included an assessment of Russia’s evolving role in the global energy system and a study of the linkages between China’s energy, climate, and national security policies.

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