What has emerged from the “123 Agreement” between the US and Saudi Arabia departs from the template Washington has used for decades in sharing nuclear technology with allies. The 2009 agreement with the UAE, still the gold standard, bound Abu Dhabi to forswear enrichment and reprocessing and to accept the IAEA’s most rigorous inspection regime, the Additional Protocol; the UAE now gets roughly a quarter of its electricity from nuclear power.

The Saudi agreement contains no such renunciation. It leaves open, pending a two-year study, a black box enrichment facility on Saudi soil, run by American firms but built inside a kingdom whose crown prince has said he will pursue a weapon the moment Iran gets there first. In place of the Additional Protocol, the deal relies on a bilateral inspection framework devised by the two governments themselves, already a retreat from the standard Washington spent half a century asking the world to accept. Congress has 90 working days to review it and would need a veto-proof majority to block it, complicated by President Donald Trump’s announcement, the morning after........

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