Senator Markey Urges Congress to Reject Trump-Saudi Nuclear Deal

Markey: “This dangerous deal is the starting gun for a Middle East nuclear arms race” Boston (August 26, 2026) - Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-chair of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, today released the following statement after the Trump administration sent to Congress a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that would open the door to providing the Kingdom with the means to produce nuclear weapons materials but would not require the most stringent safeguards against the development of those weapons. Congress holds the power to block this dangerous deal. “As a U.S. Senator, Marco Rubio once understood that handing Saudi Arabia the technology to produce nuclear weapons was a terrible idea. But now, as Secretary of State, Rubio is doing exactly that, and he and Trump are pursuing the most reckless nuclear deal in U.S. history. This giveaway to Saudi Arabia is the starting gun for a Middle East nuclear arms race. Congress must reject it. “If the Trump administration wants to stop a Saudi bomb, it should require the nonproliferation Gold Standard, which would ban enrichment and reprocessing and require International Atomic Energy Agency additional protocol safeguards in Saudi Arabia. If Riyadh did not want a bomb, it would accept the Gold Standard. But the opposite is happening. “Why? Maybe we should ask Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, who has said repeatedly that he wants a nuclear bomb. Or maybe we should ask Jared Kushner, who accepted a $2 billion investment from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund after leaving the White House at the end of the first Trump administration. This is not diplomacy; this is corruption at the expense of U.S. national security. Congress must stop this dangerous agreement before it triggers a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East.” As a founder of the national Nuclear Freeze movement, Senator Markey has long been the Congressional leader on ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons. On July 31 , Senators Markey and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) along with Representatives John Garamendi (CA-08) and Don Beyer (VA-08), co-chairs of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, published an opinion piece in MS NOW slamming Trump’s Saudi nuclear deal, citing then-Senator Marco Rubio’s understanding that handing nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia would be disastrous. On July 26 , Senator Markey decried the Trump-Saudi nuclear deal as “irresponsible and dangerous.” On March 25 , Senators Markey and Merkley reintroduced the No Nuclear Weapons for Saudi Arabia Act , legislation that would mandate that any nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia can go into effect only if it receives the affirmative vote of Congress. On March 18 , Senator Markey led his colleagues in writing to Secretary Rubio demanding the Trump administration must meet the “gold standard” of nuclear non-proliferation protections by denying Saudi Arabia the means to produce weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, materials that could be used in a nuclear bomb. In January , Senator Markey wrote to President Trump urging the strongest possible non-proliferation measures in any revised nuclear cooperation agreement with South Korea. In November 2025 , Senator Markey and Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20) wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, urging the Trump administration to include the strongest possible “gold standard” nonproliferation measures in any nuclear cooperation agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to foreclose any pathway to a nuclear weapon. In July 2025 , Senator Markey introduced the Senate companion to H.Res.317, urging the United States to lead the world in halting the nuclear arms race. In November 2024 , Senator Markey wrote to the Biden administration seeking answers about any agreement that would normalize relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel in exchange for civil nuclear energy cooperation and a U.S. defense commitment to the Kingdom. As far back as 2017, Senator Markey pressed the first Trump administration on the status of all current and ongoing discussions between the United States and other countries, including Saudi Arabia, on 123 agreements after it was reported that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was peddling a plan to build nuclear reactors throughout the Middle East. ###