There are diplomatic negotiations that proceed through back channels, careful messaging, and coordinated announcements, and there is Trump announcing via Truth Social that the US-Saudi civil nuclear deal requires Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords, which is a condition that neither the Saudis nor Trump’s own administration had been informed would be publicly announced, making Thursday the day that American foreign policy was updated via social media post while the parties to the policy read about it alongside everyone else.
Trump posted that the deal was conditioned on Saudi Arabia’s normalization with Israel, per CNN’s confirmed reporting and the HuffPost live blog updated Thursday. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that “Trump is unilaterally changing the terms of the Saudi nuclear deal via Truth Social posts without even contacting any Saudi officials,” per journalist Aaron Rupar’s post, which Leavitt confirmed rather than disputed. Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright had been rolling out the deal without having told the president it was being announced, producing a situation where the president learned about his own deal from his secretary and then changed its terms on social media.
Saudi officials were blindsided, per CNN’s reporting, which is the diplomatic description of learning about a condition of your nuclear negotiation from a Truth Social post. The Saudis have been in discussions with the US about civilian nuclear cooperation for years. The Abraham Accords normalization with Israel is a separate and significantly more politically sensitive question, involving domestic Saudi politics, the Palestinian question, and the current state of the Gaza conflict. Trump added it to the deal. Via his phone.
Trump then grew “even more uneasy” when Fox News criticized the deal for not requiring normalization as a condition, which is the feedback loop of a president who announced the condition on social media after conservatives criticized the deal for not having the condition and then announced it.
The Saudis have not yet responded publicly. Trump’s Energy Secretary has not addressed the sequence publicly. The Truth Social post remains.
When the president changes the terms of a nuclear deal via social media without telling the other party, and his own team learns about it from his feed, who exactly is negotiating?
Sources
Raw Story: ‘No enrichment!’: Saudi deal reportedly threatened by Trump’s sudden Truth Social demand
HuffPost: ‘Don’t See Our Benefit’: Fox News Host Rips Apart Saudi Deal Trump Just Struck
