President Donald Trump made waves the day after his administration announced a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. He conditioned the deal on Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel, while insisting there would be no uranium enrichment on Saudi soil — a stance also reiterated by his U.N. ambassador, Michael Waltz.

But confusion persists in light of the deal’s provision that Washington could allow a U.S.-built uranium enrichment plant in Saudi Arabia in the future. Enrichment and plutonium reprocessing are the key dual-use pathways for fueling both peaceful nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. For decades, Washington has worked to prevent the proliferation of enrichment and reprocessing technology.