Trump said to fume at energy secretary for announcing Saudi nuclear deal without his okay

CNN says US president was further irked when agreement was criticized in conservative media, before he publicly conditioned it on normalization with Israel

US President Donald Trump was reportedly furious that his energy secretary announced a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, leading him to the shock move of then making it conditional on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords.

According to a CNN report, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright did not tell Trump that he would be announcing the deal, and the move on Wednesday left many in the White House surprised and angry.

This was despite the fact that The Wall Street Journal had already reported the deal was being finalized a day prior to the announcement.

The deal would see US companies provide nuclear energy to Saudi Arabia, and included the possibility of nuclear enrichment taking place on Saudi territory, a provision that alarmed experts in nuclear proliferation.

Trump was reportedly further riled after watching criticism of the deal roll in from many conservative outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News.

While some had suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had lobbied Trump at the last minute to add the condition that Riyadh normalize ties with Jerusalem, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the pair had not spoken in the interim.

CNN noted that Trump’s post on Truth Social on Thursday announcing that the already signed deal was conditional on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords came just minutes after a Fox News panel questioned the wisdom of the agreement.

Trump said on Thursday that the agreement would require Riyadh to normalize relations with Israel, prompting praise from Netanyahu’s office.

In his post on Truth Social, Trump insisted there would be “no enrichment of material,” meaning the deal would not grant Saudi Arabia the right to enrich uranium on its soil.

The deal “pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote.

While former US president Joe Biden’s administration conditioned nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia on the kingdom’s recognition of Israel, reports had suggested that Trump would not enforce this condition.

Trump’s post came after pro-Israel advocates — and reportedly Jerusalem itself — expressed alarm over his administration’s decision to proceed with the civilian nuclear deal without conditioning it on Riyadh’s entry into the Abraham Accords.

Saudi Arabia’s longstanding position has been that it will not sign the Abraham Accords without an agreement on a roadmap to Palestinian statehood, a nonstarter for Israel’s current government.

The White House insisted that the Saudis knew the deal was contingent on recognizing Israel, despite the fact that it was not mentioned when the deal was announced.

“The president is always the final dealmaker, as you know,” Leavitt told reporters, adding that the Abraham Accords were “something that he feels very strongly about and has spoken about it in the past and will continue to uphold.”

On Friday, Trump insisted that Saudi Arabia would establish ties with Israel “at some point,” in an apparent acknowledgement that such a deal was not likely to happen in the near future.

Trump claimed that countries such as Saudi Arabia had been hesitant to join the Abraham Accords due to Iran, insisting that the problem has been resolved due to the US strikes against the Islamic Republic.

Riyadh and other countries in the region have never cited concerns about blowback from Iran to explain their reticence to normalize ties with Israel.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords during Trump’s first term in 2020, breaking a longstanding taboo to become the first Arab states to recognize Israel in a quarter century. Morocco and Sudan followed suit.