Twenty years of negotiations, one signature - and less than 24 hours of life. That is how long the agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation between the US and Saudi Arabia lasted, signed on Wednesday at the US Department of Energy, before Donald Trump brought it down with a single post online.

The agreement was concluded with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and, after two decades of debate, finally opened Riyadh a path toward enriching uranium under certain conditions. By Thursday morning, at 7:52, Trump added a new condition on his Truth Social platform that no one had asked for: Saudi Arabia must join the so-called Abraham Accords and normalise relations with Israel.

“The arrangement requires Saudi Arabia to join the successful Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote, in order to achieve “true peace in the Middle East.” Translated from diplomatic into plain language: he signed, then changed his mind, and you learned the condition at the same time as everyone else.

Why suddenly? According to sources, Trump was unhappy with the way the deal had been presented. Conservative media, among them Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, criticised it precisely because it did not include normalisation with Israel - something the Biden administration had also wanted. When your own side complains, in Washington a post on social media comes faster than a diplomatic note.

The Saudis, understandably, were caught off guard. The original agreement allowed uranium enrichment without the strictest safeguards - and now the whole deal hangs on a question that has nothing to do with reactors, but with Tel Aviv. Reports suggest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoped to influence the deal, although the White House claims he and Trump had no recent conversation on the subject.

This is the Middle East as we know it - where one signature is worth less than one morning mood. Nuclear technology is traded like a chip in poker, and the terms change while the ink is still drying. The question isn't whether Riyadh will give in, but how many such “final” deals we will see before anyone actually gets enriched uranium.