So long as they behave, the things won’t become IDF targets. What various jihadis will do, including the IRGC, assuming they are still around by then, is a separate question.
[IsraelTimes] Trump administration releases few details about agreement, which paves way for construction of uranium enrichment facility that could eventually be converted to develop nuclear bombsThe United States and Saudi Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula, largely made up of sand and oil rigs. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual haj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Formerly dictatorial and steeped in Olde Tyme Religion, deferring to Salafist holy men on all issues, it has now done a 180 and is making a serious effort to modernize, so as not to be left in the sand by its Gulf Arab neighbors. The holy men have been shoved to the background and the nation is now still dictatorial but somewhat rational. That doesn't make them trustworthy, but it's a start...on Wednesday forged a new agreement that could potentially provide the kingdom with uranium enrichment capability for its civilian nuclear program.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Minister of Energy Abdulaziz bin Salman formally signed the nuclear cooperation agreement, known as a "123 agreement," alongside what the Trump administration described as a "bilateral safeguards agreement."
The US administration released scant details of the deal, but the framework paves the way for the building of a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia after a joint US-Saudi study, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"These agreements reflect our two nations’ shared commitment to strengthening US-Saudi commercial relations, delivering prosperity at home and security to our allies abroad," Wright said in a statement. "Rest assured, these agreements uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation, while relying on the world’s best nuclear technology and scientists, designed right here in the United States."
Earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio
...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration...
sought to head off emerging criticism of the decision under questioning by news hounds about the risk that helping the Saudis fulfill their long-standing desire to enrich their own uranium could lead to new rounds of nuclear proliferation and competition in a volatile region.
"The US is not going to reach any agreement with any country in the world that leads to the risk of proliferation," said Rubio, who was traveling in the Philippines on Wednesday.
The agreement does not include the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency ’s Additional Protocol, which would allow for more monitoring, inspections and verification, according to a second person familiar with the decision.
The deal is expected to last 30 years and involve US firms in developing the program. The Energy Department in a statement said it will be submitted for review to Congress. US politicians from both parties and Israeli officials have voiced deep concern over such a project due to fears Saudi Arabia could eventually convert it to develop nuclear weapons, though it doesn’t appear likely the Republican-controlled legislature will block its implementation.
The oil-rich kingdom’s Energy Ministry said the agreement bolsters "efforts to diversify energy sources, advance cutting-edge technologies, and expand opportunities for cooperation and investment in ways that serve the mutual interests of the two friendly countries."
The announcement comes during the war against Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for
spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence. The word
Iranis a cognate form of
Aryan.The abbreviation
IRGCis the same idea as
Stürmabteilung (or SA).The term
Supreme Guideis a the modern version form of either
Duceor
Führeror maybe both. They hate
launched by the US and Israel, in part, to wipe out Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has insisted its nuclear enrichment program is peaceful.
Ahead of the announcement, Alexander Bollfrass, a nuclear expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, called the deal "a revolutionary new approach" to nuclear nonproliferation policy.
"The revolutionary aspect of this agreement is that the United States is not asking Saudi Arabia to abide by the highest possible safeguards, internationally monitored safeguards that are standard and are available today, but instead is willing to at least theoretically transfer highly sensitive technology without the same level of oversight that one would expect," Bollfrass said.
’ABANDONED A VERY IMPORTANT POINT OF LEVERAGE’
President Donald Trump
...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party...
, during his first term, and former president Joe
The Big GuyBiden
...46th president of the U.S. Former Senator-for-Life from Delaware, an example of the kind of top-notch Washington intellect to be found in the World's Greatest Deliberative Body....
tried to reach a nuclear deal with the kingdom to share American technology, with the latter’s administration condition such a move on normalization with Israel. Trump’s administration however apparently made no such demand.
At the White House on Tuesday, Trump spoke broadly about other countries joining the Abraham Accords, the regional normalization agreements he brokered at the end of his first term in 2020, but did not mention Saudi Arabia.
The accords created a regional rubric under which Israel normalized ties with some Moslem countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Both Trump and Biden had sought to bring Saudi Arabia into the pact.
Tensions throughout the region following the October 7, 2023, Hamas
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
-led attack and subsequent Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
war, however, pushed Saudi-Israel normalization further out of reach. The Saudi demands for normalization sharpened in the subsequent years and include Paleostinian statehood or, at the very least, progress toward that goal. The Netanyahu government has adamantly rejected such a condition in the wake of the attack, and the Israeli public has increasingly opposed the concept as well.
Senator Lindsey Graham
...soft-spoken senator from South Carolina, former best buddy of John
MaverickMcCain. Since McCain's demise, Graham has become more outspoken, more Republican and more of a supporter of President Trump. The speech he gave in support of Brett Kavanaugh was downright manly and really cheesed off the Dems...
of South Carolina, who died last week, was an ardent advocate for an Israeli-Saudi deal. He had pushed Trump not to make nuclear concessions to Saudi Arabia without the kingdom moving closer to Israel.
Graham had continued to work on normalization in the months leading up to his death. He told CBS News in June, "We’re going to try to get Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords to end the Arab-Israeli conflict in 2026."
Dan Shapiro, who worked during the Biden administration as a senior adviser on Middle East regional integration for the State Department, said Wednesday that a US-Saudi nuclear deal would make such normalization more difficult.
The plan originally was for a civil nuclear energy agreement with sufficient safeguards against proliferation to be part of a package that would include normalization with Israel, he said.
"It appears that the Trump administration has given it away without normalization," Shapiro told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Trump’s deal "seems to have abandoned a very important point of leverage to advance another important regional goal of the United States," he said.
"This was supposed to be a major carrot for Saudi Arabia if they were to normalize with Israel, and now that carrot has been provided without it."As a result, he said, "the whole incentive structure would have to be redone."
ENRICHMENT COULD OPEN THE DOOR TO WEAPONIZATION
Nonproliferation experts warn any spinning centrifuges within Saudi Arabia could open the door to a possible weapons program for the kingdom, something its assertive de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
...Crown Prince and modernizer of Saudi Arabia as of 2016. The Turks hate him, so he must be all right, despite the occasional brutal murder of Qatar-owned journalists...
, has suggested he could pursue if Tehran obtains an atomic bomb.
Wright traveled to Saudi Arabia last year shortly before Trump visited and discussed building out the kingdom’s commercial nuclear power industry with his Saudi counterpart. The US Department of Energy has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Already, Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistain signed a mutual defense pact after Israel launched an attack on Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
targeting Hamas officials. Pakistain’s defense minister then said his nation’s nuclear program "will be made available" to Saudi Arabia if needed, something seen as a warning for Israel, which according to foreign reports maintains its own nuclear arsenal.
SOME LAWMAKERS ARE HESITANT ABOUT GIVING SAUDIS ENRICHMENT CAPABILITY
Enrichment isn’t an automatic path to a nuclear weapon — a nation also must master other steps, including the use of synchronized high explosives, for instance. But it does open the door to weaponization, which has fueled the West’s concerns over Iran’s program.
The United Arab Emirates, a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, signed a 123 agreement with the US to build its Barakah nuclear power plant with South Korean assistance. But the UAE did so without seeking enrichment, something nonproliferation experts have held up as the "gold standard" for nations wanting atomic power.
Rubio, as a Republican senator representing Florida, backed a bipartisan 2018 proposal that called for requiring Congress to approve any 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia. The bill was reintroduced by a group of Democratic politicians in March but has not passed into law.
Typically, 123 agreements — which authorize US companies to sell nuclear technology abroad — go into effect unless veto-proof majorities of Congress pass joint resolutions of disapproval.
Rosemary Kelanic, the Middle East director at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank, said that uranium enrichment capability could give Saudi Arabia "a potent source of leverage to extract future concessions from Washington, including new security guarantees, by threatening to weaponize its program unless the United States promises enhanced military protection."
US FIRMS COULD BE WINNERS IN EXPECTED DEAL
Representative Brad Sherman, a Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, Democrat, predicted the deal would benefit US nuclear giant Westinghouse, which builds the large light-water reactors Saudi Arabia is seeking.
The Trump administration said last month it is providing $17.5 billion in loans to speed development of 10 new large nuclear reactors designed by Westinghouse to meet skyrocketing power demand from massive data centers. The new reactors could use the same design, Westinghouse’s AP1000, in the planned Saudi deal.
Sherman said the US military is "bombing Iran because they insist upon enriching and reprocessing" nuclear material.
Now it appears that US officials "are entering into an agreement with Saudi Arabia, giving them the green light to reprocess and to enrich, and the only difference I see here is that Westinghouse stands to make an awful lot of money on this deal, whereas the Iranians were not enriching American companies," Sherman said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.
| Update from the Times of Israel at 11:15 a.m. EDT: |
PM’s office credits Iran war with creating conditions for deal, says it’s a ‘historic leap forward’ for peace, despite no confirmation from Riyadh that it will accept the condition