The United States and Saudi Arabia are expected to announce a deal that will allow the Gulf kingdom to develop a civilian nuclear program, according to US media reports.

An announcement from US President Donald Trump’s administration is expected on Wednesday, US officials said.

The deal could be worth billions of dollars to the United States, whose companies could participate in building a facility to produce enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants but also to make nuclear bombs.

Nuclear experts and former officials from Israel – the United States’ main ally in the Middle East – have expressed concern that the plan could ultimately lead to Saudi Arabia developing a nuclear weapon.

The BBC has asked the White House for comment.

US media reports say that under the terms of the deal, after undertaking a joint study with the US, Saudi Arabia could be allowed to enrich uranium in its soil to produce fuel at a US-built enrichment facility rather than relying on imported fuel.

That provision would distinguish this agreement from another the United States signed in 2009 with Saudi Arabia’s neighbor, the United Arab Emirates, under which the United Arab Emirates does not produce its own fuel and agrees to a host of other restrictions.

For that reason, the agreement is also expected to draw concern from advocates of nuclear nonproliferation, whose ultimate goal is to prevent an increase in the number of nuclear weapons around the world.

The nuclear issue has been at the center of the months-long conflict between the United States and Israel with Iran. The two nations say one of the reasons they attacked Iran in February was to prevent the country from developing a nuclear weapon, something Tehran denies planning to do.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told CBS News in 2018 that his own nation was not planning to acquire a nuclear weapon, but that “certainly, if Iran were to develop a nuclear bomb, we will do the same as soon as possible.”

The agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia that will be announced on Wednesday has already been approved by Trump and will last 30 years, according to the Wall Street Journal.

If the United States objects to enrichment being carried out in Saudi Arabia after the joint study, the kingdom would not be allowed to do so alone or with another foreign partner for 10 years, the newspaper states.

The plan will now be sent to the United States Congress. Some lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are also expected to oppose the deal, although Trump’s Republican Party controls both the upper and lower chambers.

The agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia is not contingent on the Saudis normalizing diplomatic relations with Israel, the New York Times reports. The push for Saudi-Israeli normalization has been an aspiration of successive American presidents.