The Situation Room - August 26th

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I’m Atlas, and welcome to The Situation Room! We cover the most high impact geopolitical developments every Wednesday!

Today’s topics:

• Trump Pushes For Saudi Arabia To Normalize Relations With Israel As Nuclear Deal Reaches Congress

• Iran & Oman Hold Talks For Strait of Hormuz Commerce

• Sister Of Late Lindsay Graham Wins S.C. Senate Primary

Trump Pushes For Saudi Arabia To Normalize Relations With Israel As Nuclear Deal Reaches Congress

_{By: Atlas}

President Donald Trump has formally submitted the US-Saudi civil nuclear agreement to Congress for review while insisting the pact will take effect only if Riyadh normalizes relations with Israel — a condition that surprised the Saudis when he first attached it and that now shadows a deal worth tens of billions of dollars to American industry.

The classified document was delivered to Capitol Hill on Monday as required by the Atomic Energy Act, according to an administration official, a congressional aide, and two others familiar with the matter. "The president's position has not changed that the agreement will only move forward if Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords," the official said, referring to the US-brokered agreements of 2020 and 2021 that established diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

The agreement — known as a 123 agreement — was signed in late July in Washington by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart. The following day, Trump announced the normalization requirement, a move that caught Riyadh off guard and raised immediate doubts about whether the pact would ever come to fruition. The Saudi embassy in Washington did not comment Tuesday.

Unusually, the entire submission is classified at a high level. Previous civil nuclear pacts have been made public, sometimes with classified annexes withheld; none of the officials would say whether the Israel condition is written into the document itself.

How the Review Works — and the Loophole It Opens

Congress has 90 days while in session to review the agreement, which was sent to congressional leaders and is expected to reach committees Wednesday. Unless lawmakers pass a joint resolution of disapproval within that window, the pact enters into force without a vote by either chamber. If Congress did reject it, Trump could veto the resolution, requiring a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override — a threshold opponents are unlikely to reach.

That procedural math cuts in an unexpected direction, nonproliferation advocates note. By starting the clock, Trump has created the possibility that the agreement becomes law by default — potentially without either the normalization he demands or the enrichment restrictions critics want. "This is hardly ideal if you're serious about no enrichment and recognition of Israel," said Henry Sokolski, head of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

The 30-year pact gives US companies an exclusive role in developing Saudi Arabia's civilian nuclear sector, shutting out foreign competitors. It calls for construction of AP1000 reactors — a project worth tens of billions of dollars that would benefit Westinghouse, jointly owned by Canada-based Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management — following a joint US-Saudi study.

The Enrichment Question

The deal's most contested feature is what it does not contain. Democratic lawmakers and nonproliferation specialists have criticized the agreement for failing to bar Saudi Arabia from enriching uranium or reprocessing spent fuel — the two principal pathways to a nuclear weapon. The UAE accepted such prohibitions, known as the "gold standard," in its 2009 civil nuclear agreement with Washington; the Saudis have long resisted them, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said publicly that the kingdom would pursue a bomb if Iran obtained one.

The administration says the pact contains the nonproliferation measures required by law. Skeptics counter that a Saudi enrichment capability — even a nominally civilian one — could spur a new round of proliferation and competition in a region already convulsed by the six-month war over Iran's nuclear program. The debate on Capitol Hill is expected to be intense, pitting the administration's push to revive the American nuclear industry against decades of bipartisan resistance to enrichment on Saudi soil.

Normalization's Circular Problem

The Israel condition confronts a diplomatic knot no administration has untied. Saudi Arabia has made clear that recognizing Israel requires first an irreversible path to Palestinian statehood — a demand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects as untenable for his country's security, and one he has repeated on the campaign trail ahead of Israel's October elections.

The gap is not new. President Joe Biden also pursued a Saudi nuclear deal tied to normalization, and diplomats believed Riyadh was close to recognizing Israel in 2023 before the Gaza war that began that October transformed the landscape. Trump, who worked on a similar pact in his first term and brokered the original accords, is betting that the lure of American nuclear technology — alongside the security relationship deepened by Saudi participation in strikes on Iran-backed militias — can close a distance that statehood politics has kept open.

It was not clear Tuesday how the president expects the congressional submission itself to advance that goal, and the White House did not elaborate on the sequencing: whether normalization must precede entry into force, or whether the 90-day clock is intended to pressure Riyadh toward a decision.

A Piece of a Larger Endgame

The timing places the deal inside the administration's broader effort to reorder the region as it looks for an exit from the Iran war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has told foreign counterparts the US does not expect to launch new strikes on Iran "for the time being," with one official saying the posture will likely hold until after November's midterm elections. The administration this week rolled out a new sanctions wave against more than 60 entities, while Iran and Oman advanced plans for a temporary Hormuz shipping corridor that pushed oil prices down 2% on reopening hopes.

Saudi Arabia sits at the center of that architecture — a target of Iranian proxy attacks, a partner in US strikes on militias in Iraq, and the biggest remaining prize in the normalization project. Whether Congress lets the nuclear deal ride, and whether Riyadh judges the reactors worth the recognition, will now play out on parallel 90-day and election-year clocks. For a president seeking a signature realignment to close out a costly war, the submission starts the bidding; the kingdom has yet to name its final price.

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