Earlier today, President Trump threw an apparent monkey wrench into the announced Saudi nuclear deal by adding a condition that the Saudis join the Abraham Accords, thus recognizing Israel. Not having followed this issue closely, I found the context in the linked article helpful:
Negotiations for a Saudi nuclear power plant began in earnest under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, who envisaged it as part of a broader deal that would also include a security pact with the kingdom in return for it establishing ties with Israel.
Those talks foundered after Israel refused to commit to recognising a Palestinian state, a key Saudi condition on normalising relations.
The Saudi agreement, as originally announced, didn’t include either of those terms. Now Trump has added the requirement that Saudi Arabia recognize Israel:
Riyadh appeared to have been taken by surprise by Trump’s statement on Thursday. A source familiar with the talks that led to the signing on Tuesday said there had been no suggestion from Saudi Arabia that it would recognise Israel in exchange for the nuclear deal.
Jon Alterman, of the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: “It’s a strange thing to have left out of the announcement if it was intended to be included. It makes you wonder about the process.
“One possibility is that [Trump] is trying to walk it back, one is that the president misunderstood a vague Saudi promise sometime in the future, another is that he was never completely in the loop.”
We will have to see what happens.
