Dem
47
GOP
53
In the same year Donald Trump attacked Iran for enriching uranium, he signed a deal with Saudi Arabia to help it enrich uranium. That could lead Saudi Arabia to have nuclear weapons in a few years. Of course, there was the usual boilerplate that Saudi Arabia is not supposed to develop (or buy) its own enrichment capabilities for 10 years, but there is no way to enforce that at all. To make it clear that Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, known as MbS, wants no part of serious inspections, he refused to sign the standard agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency on the grounds that he doesn't want inspectors nosing around in the holy city of Mecca.
What is this all about? Nobody is talking and if someone starts talking, take it with oil barrels full of salt. Does Saudi Arabia need nuclear reactors to power its massive industrial base? Maybe not, since it doesn't have one. But if it acquires one someday, how could it be powered? Oil? Where would Saudi Arabia find oil in the middle of the desert? Solar power? You need sunshine and a lot of empty land for that. Obviously not an option for Saudi Arabia. No, nuclear power is obviously the only way to go for them.
Maybe we need some creative thinking here. Late last year, Trump and MbS reached a agreement for the U.S. to sell Saudi Arabia its most advanced weapon, the F-35 stealth fighter. Normally, only close allies are allowed to buy F-35s. Trump apparently sees Saudi Arabia, the homeland of 16 of the 19 9/11 terrorists, as a good friend. Many members of Congress see it as a not-terribly-trustworthy oil merchant.
Now the uranium deal. What is going on here? There are two grifty explanations and one non-grifty explanation, none of them good. The first grifty one is that Trump would have known before the announcement that the stock in Westnghouse would shoot up yesterday because Westinghouse is the leading nuclear reactor manufacturer in the world. He and his cronies could have loaded up on Westinghouse stock in advance and made a killing. Here is the Westinghouse stock price over the past 5 days:
The second grifty explanation is that the F-35 and uranium deals are paybacks for MbS giving Jared Kushner $2 billion of the Saudi's money to play with. After all, Saudi Arabia could easily have gotten a large bank with actual experience in money management to do the work. And maybe it is a pay-forward for the Saudis giving Kushner more money to play with in the future.
The non-grifty explanation is that Trump has come to understand that the war with Iran is lost and Iran will develop nuclear weapons. Allowing Saudi Arabia to also develop nuclear weapons (since there is no other plausible explanation for it enriching uranium, given their other energy sources) could provide a counterbalance with Iran. Two nuclear-armed enemies, whose intense hatred for the other's branch of Islam goes back almost 1,400 years. What could possibly go wrong?
Back in 1970, 46 countries agreed to the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), agreeing not to acquire nuclear weapons. That number has now grown to 191. The idea was to limit nuclear weapons to the five countries that already had them (the U.S., the U.K., the Soviet Union, France, and China) to reduce the threat of a nuclear war that could make much of the Earth uninhabitable for many years. Since then, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have tested nuclear weapons. Israel is suspected of having them. None of these countries signed the NPT.
One of the key provisions of the NPT was that nuclear countries would not help non-nuclear countries develop nuclear weapons. So far, everyone has largely stuck to the deal—until Trump's decision to help Saudi Arabia acquire them, despite the (absurd) claim that the Kingdom needs nuclear power for domestic electricity production because it doesn't have any good alternatives. But after all, obeying a Senate-ratified international treaty is for suckers. (V)