Trump sends Saudi Arabia nuclear deal to Congress

President Trump’s administration sent a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that would allow the kingdom to enrich uranium to Congress this week, kick-starting a congressional review process required under the Atomic Energy Act.

However, President Trump’s retroactive condition for the deal — that it will only move forward if Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords — has not changed, an administration official told The Hill on Wednesday.

The 30-year agreement, which the U.S. announced last month, would allow U.S. companies to develop Saudi Arabia’s civil nuclear infrastructure.

The White House submission starts the review period under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act. The agreement does not need two-thirds approval in the Senate, but the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee have a chance to contest it during a 90-day review period.

If Congress does not pass a joint resolution to reject the deal during that period, it can take effect. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the president sending the agreement to Congress.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed the deal on July 22. The agreement faced immediate backlash from nonproliferation experts, supporters of Israel and some congressional Democrats, warning the accord could pave the way for Saudi Arabia to build a nuclear weapon.

Some of those lawmakers raised the same concerns this week.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the co-chair of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, urged Congress to reject the agreement, stating it does not possess the “most stringent safeguards against the development” of nuclear weapons.

“If the Trump administration wants to stop a Saudi bomb, it should require the nonproliferation Gold Standard, which would ban enrichment and reprocessing and require International Atomic Energy Agency additional protocol safeguards in Saudi Arabia. If Riyadh did not want a bomb, it would accept the Gold Standard,” Markey said in a statement on Wednesday. “But the opposite is happening.”