The determination approving the US-Saudi nuclear agreement publishes on Tuesday, and it names two side letters and a separate safeguards agreement

Presidential Determination No. 2026-18 runs to four sentences.

It was signed on July 16, filed for public inspection on Monday morning, and publishes in the Federal Register on Tuesday. Addressed to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Energy, it records that the President has considered the proposed Agreement for Cooperation Between the United States and Saudi Arabia Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, has determined that performance of it "will promote, and will not constitute an unreasonable risk to, the common defense and security", approves it under subsection 123 b. of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, and authorizes the Secretary of State to arrange for its execution.

That finding is not a flourish. Subsection 123 b., codified at 42 U.S.C. 2153(b), requires the President to make it in writing, and to have first sent the text of the proposed agreement together with an unclassified Nuclear Proliferation Assessment Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and to have consulted those committees for not less than 30 days of continuous session, before an agreement for cooperation may be executed at all.

The interesting part of the determination is what it lists.

The agreement, it says, "will be concluded with the two related side letters and the associated Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the Application of Additional Safeguards and Verification Measures". So there are four instruments here and not one: the 123 agreement, a separate safeguards and verification agreement, and two side letters. The determination gives the title of the safeguards agreement and says nothing at all about what the side letters contain.

Six days after the determination was signed, the Department of Energy announced that Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Saudi Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman had signed a 123 agreement alongside an accompanying bilateral safeguards agreement. The department called the two documents the legal foundation for "a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership", said the 123 agreement provides access for American companies in the Saudi nuclear energy programme, and quoted Wright saying the agreements "uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation". Its statement closes by saying the agreement will now be transmitted to Congress for review. It does not describe the enrichment terms, and it does not mention side letters.

Here is what this desk can and cannot tell you. The determination is public and has been read in full. The Energy Department statement is public and has been read in full. The agreement, the safeguards agreement and the two side letters have not been published anywhere, which means the question the entire Washington argument turns on, whether and on what terms Saudi Arabia may enrich uranium on its own territory, cannot be answered from any document currently in the public record. Characterisations of those terms are circulating. None of them is checkable today.

The statute sets what happens next. Under 42 U.S.C. 2153, a proposed agreement for cooperation of this kind goes to Congress together with the President's approval and determination for a period of 60 days of continuous session, referred to the two foreign policy committees, during which both are required to hold hearings and report to their chambers. It does not take effect if Congress adopts, and there is enacted, a joint resolution stating that Congress does not favour it. The 60-day clock does not begin until the Nuclear Proliferation Assessment Statement has been submitted.

This item is late. The signing was announced on July 22 and this publication did not cover it, which was an error rather than a judgement. It runs now because the determination reaching the Federal Register is the first time the legal act underneath the announcement has been a public document, and because the clock in the paragraph above has not run out.