The Abrahamic trap: Why linking the US–Saudi nuclear pact to normalisation is a geopolitical mirage

The ink on the multi-decade US–Saudi civil nuclear cooperation agreement had barely dried in Washington when the architecture of modern Middle Eastern diplomacy was abruptly and violently upended. In a classic display of high-stakes transactional statecraft, President Donald Trump declared that the hard-fought pact, designed to secure American corporate dominance in Saudi Arabia’s emerging atomic sector through industrial giants like Westinghouse, is entirely contingent upon Riyadh formally joining the Abraham Accords. What was initially marketed across global financial markets as a monumental triumph of commercial techno-diplomacy and strategic alignment was instantly transformed into a rigid diplomatic ultimatum.  By conditioning a crucial strategic nuclear framework on immediate regional diplomatic normalisation with Israel, Washington has walked straight into a sophisticated geo-economic and […]