Saudi Arabia Learns the Limits of Pay to Play

Faithless, chaotic, and corrupt: Donald Trump’s character also shapes his foreign policy. The latest victim is Saudi Arabia—not a sympathetic victim, maybe, but a victim all the same.

On July 22, United States Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart signed an agreement for a Saudi-U.S. civilian nuclear partnership. The multi-decade, multibillion-dollar deal allows American companies to develop and operate commercial nuclear power plants on Saudi soil, potentially including a uranium-enrichment facility. The Saudis have sought such a deal for almost 20 years. United States presidents from Barack Obama onward have expressed openness to it, but on two conditions: Any deal must include safeguards against Saudi use of enrichment for nuclear weapons and also a normalization of relations with Israel.

With the return of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2024, the Saudis surely hoped their moment had arrived. Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in Trump and the Trump family, including licensing deals with the Trump Organization potentially worth billions of dollars and a huge commitment to the private-equity firm founded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. This week, those investments seemed to have paid off. Details on Wednesday’s agreement are sparse, but The Washington Post reported that the pact, by clearing a way to nuclear enrichment, opened a path to an eventual Saudi nuclear weapon. The deal also reportedly dropped the precondition that Saudi Arabia recognize Israel.

[Read: The art of the giveaway]

The Saudis, essentially, had got everything they wanted, with little sacrifice in return. But no sooner was the deal signed than the reneging began. In a Truth Social post yesterday, Trump insisted that the deal did not, in fact, include uranium enrichment and that it is “totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords”—that is, to normalized relations with Israel. Utter chaos and confusion duly erupted over what Trump meant to accomplish with these words. Is Trump attempting to blow up the freshly inked deal after hearing Republicans criticize it on Fox News and elsewhere, as CNN suggests? Or was the outburst simply Trump bluster without real-world consequences?

No one seems to know. Trump did not consult the Saudi leadership before adding a late condition to the deal they had just celebrated. Just what this means for the deal’s fate in Congress is unclear too. Congress can block it, but would need a veto-proof majority in both the House and Senate to do so—presuming Trump even wants the deal to go ahead.

The Saudis must be puzzled. They paid their “quid” to the Trump family. Where is their “quo”? Can criticism on Fox News cancel billions paid for the Trump family’s favor?

This turnabout comes at a very bad time for Saudi Arabia. The country has already been left stranded and exposed by the failure of Trump’s Iran war, which has emboldened Iran and tightened its hold on the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia’s most important maritime connection to world oil markets. Saudi Arabia needs protection. Its traditional protector has been exposed as fickle and weak. The kingdom may now see a nuclear force of its own as a condition of its survival in a post-American Middle East.

[Read: The mess the Iran War made]

American advocates of a U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal have long warned that if the United States does not partner with Saudi Arabia, the Saudis might look to Russia or China for nuclear technology and stronger military ties. But past Saudi efforts to find alternative security arrangements have not worked well. In 2023, Saudi Arabia signed a Chinese-brokered rapprochement with Iran, but China’s friendly relations with Tehran did nothing to protect Saudi Arabia from Iranian missile attacks in recent months.

Saudi Arabia’s other options look even worse. The country, which reportedly financed the Pakistani nuclear-weapons program in the 1990s, is believed to hold some kind of call on those weapons if it ever needs them. The two countries formalized a joint defense pact last year. But a future as a Pakistani military protectorate is not a promising one, especially because India ranks among Saudi Arabia’s top three export markets, and is probably its fastest-growing one.

Which brings us back to Saudi Arabia’s Plan A. Is the nukes plan cooked? Trump often announces things on social media that don’t come true in real life. In his first term, he announced on Twitter in 2019 that he had ordered all U.S. businesses out of China. The “order” was dropped three days later. In June 2025, Trump announced a pause on immigration enforcement on farms, and at hotels and restaurants. The pause was reversed several days later. Trump has repeatedly announced tariff increases that are then shelved and military strikes that are never carried out, including a vow last November to invade Nigeria “guns a-blazing” to wipe out that country’s Islamic insurgents. So it may be with Trump’s after-the-signature demand that Saudi Arabia recognize Israel as an additional price for a deal greased by the flow of funds to Trump companies and relatives.

America’s traditional democratic allies feel betrayed and baffled by the unpredictability of Trump’s pay-for-play diplomacy. But those willing to pay can suffer betrayals and bafflements of their own. If not even the Saudis, who showered Trump and his family with cash and gifts, can trust Trump’s diplomacy, who else on earth can feel any confidence at all?