For several decades, the United States and other advanced nuclear states have worked cooperatively to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and the technologies and materials that can be used to produce them. In the years since, every U.S. president on both sides of the aisle have tried to advance those efforts. In alignment with these efforts, in 2011, the United States spearheaded an international effort to tighten restrictions on the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology that can be used to build nuclear weapons, helping strengthen a nonproliferation norm.
Fifteen years later, however, the Trump administration is reversing course. In July 2026, the United States signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that could allow them to enrich their own uranium, despite the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s threat to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran does. The agreement was a longtime coming to the Saudis who have sought the technology for years, and an alarming nonproliferation move by the U.S. who potentially just opened the door to Saudi Arabia developing the capability to produce weapons-usable nuclear material.
Domestic nuclear fuel capabilities, particularly uranium enrichment and reprocessing (ENR), pose a proliferation risk because they can provide states with the technology and materials needed to produce weapons-usable material. These capabilities can lower the technical barrier to developing nuclear weapons and complicate international monitoring and oversight.
Yet regardless of these concerns, President Trump went ahead and signed the nuclear cooperation deal. The proposed agreement could enable Saudi Arabia to develop domestic uranium enrichment capabilities up to 20 percent, a level that can quickly be enriched to weapons-grade. More concerningly, the agreement does not require Saudi Arabia to adopt the IAEA’s Additional Protocol (AP). Instead, it includes a Bilateral Safeguards Agreement that limits additional safeguards to declared facilities where cooperative nuclear activities take place. In short, the proposed deal allows the kingdom to develop sensitive fuel-cycle capabilities without the comprehensive safeguards the United States sought to promote in 2011.
The risk associated with civilian nuclear technology being diverted to military purposes is not new. In 1974, India demonstrated this threat when it used plutonium produced in a Canadian-supplied research reactor, operated with U.S.-supplied heavy water, to conduct its first nuclear explosive test. The test exposed a critical gap in international export controls and helped prompt the establishment of the National Suppliers Group (NSG), a voluntary consensus-based group of 48 countries that coordinates guidelines for international nuclear trade to limit the risk that nuclear materials and dual-use technology— those with both civilian and military applications— could contribute to weapons programs.
Among its many functions, the Nuclear Suppliers Group sets global guidelines for nuclear technology trade to minimize the chance that the dual-use technology could be used to create nuclear weapons. After several clandestine nuclear facilities were discovered in the 1990s and 2000s, U.S. policymakers decided the international rules that dictate nuclear trade need to change. This resulted in the 2011 revision of the NSG guidelines to include more intrusive safeguards as a condition for states to obtain sensitive fuel cycle technologies.
The United States spearheaded this change, indefatigably leading a decade long diplomatic saga to more tightly regulate global nuclear trade. By opening the door to future enrichment cooperation in Saudi Arabia without requiring more intrusive international safeguards, Washington risks weakening the credibility of the guidelines it helped champion and creating a precedent that other supplier states could invoke to justify similar exceptions. The consequences could extend beyond Saudi Arabia, leaving the international nonproliferation regime vulnerable to the erosion of the very rules they designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
The Need for Stronger Restrictions
By the early 2000s, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to state and nonstate actors had become a top global security priority. The push to strengthen international nuclear trade rules emerged from a series of revelations that exposed gaps in the global nonproliferation regime. In 1991, the discovery of Iraq’s covert nuclear weapons program demonstrated that traditional NPT-required IAEA safeguards, which focused primarily on declared nuclear materials and facilities, could fail to detect undeclared weapons-related activities. In response, the IAEA began strengthening its safeguards system, culminating in the approval of the Model Additional Protocol in 1997. The Additional Protocol (AP) grants the IAEA the authority to conduct more intrusive inspections amongst states who have an agreement in place. These inspections include access to more robust information on all aspects of the nuclear cycle, short-notice inspector access, and importantly, it gives IAEA inspectors authorization to request access to inspect undeclared facilities.
Subsequent discoveries reinforced the necessity of the Additional Protocol. In 2002, Iranian opposition groups revealed the existence of previously undeclared nuclear facilities at Natanz, a uranium enrichment complex, making the reality of a burgeoning weapons program a disturbing threat. These revelations exposed the challenges of detecting sensitive fuel-cycle activities that could support a nuclear weapons program. In 2002, the United States confronted North Korea with evidence of a clandestine uranium enrichment program, which violated North Korea’s commitments under the NPT and IAEA safeguards agreement. The country conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006, with plutonium from a separate facility. In 2007, a covert Syrian reactor under construction at Al Kibar was destroyed before becoming operational; the facility was later assessed by the United States to have been intended for plutonium production.
Together, these events set fire under the United States to take steps to prevent the development of covert nuclear facilities and the subsequent spread of nuclear weapons. Traditional safeguards alone could not reliably detect every undeclared nuclear activity, while existing trade controls needed to address the transfer of sensitive technologies and equipment. One major response occurred: tighter restrictions on exports of sensitive nuclear technologies, particularly uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing equipment and technology. The Nuclear Suppliers Group provided a key forum for addressing these concerns.
Reaching Consensus at the NSG
These efforts culminated in the 2011 revision of the NSG’s guidelines to include the Additional Protocol (or regional safeguards agreement) as a prerequisite for recipient states seeking to obtain enrichment and/or reprocessing technology from one of the global suppliers.
This revision did not come easily. It followed nearly a decade of sustained diplomatic effort led by the United States. Shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Washington began pushing to tighten NSG guidelines governing enrichment and reprocessing technology transfers. The effort gained urgency after Russia shipped low-enriched uranium fuel to India’s Tarapour nuclear power plant, invoking an exception in the existing NSG guidelines for transfers deemed essential to the safe operation of existing facilities. India lacked comprehensive IAEA safeguards across all its nuclear facilities. More than just sparking debate over this specific clause, this event made the U.S. realize that changing the guidelines over especially sensitive nuclear technologies would be necessary to prevent the transfer of even more dangerous nuclear material in the future.
In 2004, the Bush administration proposed that the NSG adopt guidelines prohibiting ENR transfers to states that did not already possess these capabilities and requiring future recipients to have an AP in force. This approach sought to prevent the further spread of technologies that could provide pathways to weapons-usable nuclear material. However, other NSG members resisted a blanket prohibition, concerned about restricting legitimate civilian nuclear cooperation and limiting access to potential markets. In protest of the United States’ proposal, Canada subsequently proposed a compromise based on specific criteria for transfers. Proposals included objective requirements, such as compliance with nonproliferation obligations and safeguards agreements, alongside subjective considerations, such as the recipient’s security environment and stated rationale for acquiring the technology.
Other NSG members, including the U.S., quickly dismissed this approach, claiming it was too lax. However, the U.S. agreed to compromise on several points. In addition to the criteria listed under the criteria-based approach, the United States also promoted a “black box” approach, which was designed to prevent recipient countries from accessing sensitive technologies. The proposed black box compromise would allow suppliers to retain control over sensitive technology and facility operations rather than fully transferring the underlying capabilities.
Resulting from the U.S. rebuttal was the 2008 "clean text" that took the aforementioned points into consideration. The clean text had objective and subjective criteria. The objective criteria would replace the word ‘restraint’ listed in NSG guidelines with several specific criteria including a concluded and in-force AP agreement with the IAEA. The subjective criteria included considerations over stability within and around the recipient state and rationale for wanting the technology.
A major hurdle to gaining full consensus on the "clean text" was the Additional Protocol requirement. NSG states-parties who did not currently have an AP in force, including South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina objected. South Africa argued that requiring an Additional Protocol would be unfair to recipient states as the Additional Protocol is a voluntary agreement with the IAEA. Longstanding skeptics of international organizations, Brazil and Argentina have an alternative bilateral safeguard agreement which they believe is an adequate substitute for the Additional Protocol. Other countries objected to subjective criteria that could leave transfer decisions open to political judgment.
A major turning point came in 2008, when the NSG granted India an exemption permitting nuclear trade despite its non-NPT status, in part to accommodate opposing states such as Russia, a frequent supplier to India’s nuclear industry. The United States also championed the exemption, seeking to strengthen its strategic partnership with India and secure access for American companies to its growing nuclear energy market. In 2009, with Russia on board, the United States pursued other diplomatic avenues, in an attempt to push the NSG process along. This resulted in the United States leading the Group of Eight Industrialized Nations (G8) to adopt a unilateral declaration restricting the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technology.
After opposing states made concessions and after almost a decade of debate, the NSG reached consensus at their 2011 plenary meeting, adopting several revisions to their guidelines. The accepted revisions included the objective and subjective criteria and effectively the Additional Protocol. Paragraph VI(c) introduces the Additional Protocol as a condition of supply:
[O]nly when the recipient has brought into force a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, and an Additional Protocol based on the Model Additional Protocol or, pending this, is implementing appropriate safeguards agreements in cooperation with the IAEA, including a regional accounting and control arrangement for nuclear materials, as approved by the IAEA Board of Governors.
The phrase, “or pending this, is implementing appropriate safeguards agreements in cooperation with the IAEA…,” established a loophole for countries without an Additional Protocol and was included to take into account Argentina and Brazil, which have their own bilateral safeguards arrangements and pushed back heavily against the Additional Protocol.
The 2011 revision of the NSG guidelines significantly tightened the conditions for transferring enrichment and reprocessing technology. It introduced stricter eligibility criteria, including the Additional Protocol requirement, and established new transfer conditions restricting access to enabling design manufacturing technology, preventing recipient states from replicating sensitive facilities, and limiting uranium enrichment to 20 percent. The revision also encouraged multinational participation, strengthened IAEA safeguards, and required measures to protect transferred technologies from unauthorized retransfers. However, because the guidelines remain voluntary and lack formal enforcement mechanisms, their effectiveness ultimately depends on supplier states’ willingness to comply.
A Strengthened Norm
Although the NSG guidelines are voluntary and cannot prevent states from developing these capabilities indigenously, they established a common standard for restricting the international transfer of proliferation-sensitive technologies. Since their adoption in 2011, no new states have legally or officially received enrichment or reprocessing technologies, and no new clandestine programs have been uncovered.
The United States, however, has dealt a significant blow to this norm by signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that does not require the kingdom to adopt the IAEA’s Additional Protocol or an equally intrusive regional safeguards agreement. The deal risks enabling the very proliferation pathways the 2011 revision was designed to constrain— the development of clandestine nuclear activities under the guise of a civilian nuclear program.
By potentially circumventing the very safeguards it helped champion, Washington risks undermining both the credibility of its nonproliferation commitments and the strength of the international norms it sought to institutionalize.
The question raised by the Saudi agreement, then, is not simply whether certain technology should be transferred. It is whether nuclear supplier states will continue to regard common nonproliferation standards as collective commitments or increasingly treat them as standards that can be adjusted as they please. The NSG’s 2011 revision represented an effort to make nuclear trade more predictable and resistant to nonproliferation. Preserving that achievement requires more than retaining the guidelines on paper; it requires suppliers, especially those that helped establish them, to demonstrate that the principles behind them still inform their choices. - JOCELYN BRIDGES, Fall Intern 2026