Washington, D.C. — President Trump’s nuclear cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia lacks standard safeguard measures and opens up enormous and unnecessary risks. The agreement paves the way for uranium enrichment to take place within the territory of Saudi Arabia, the essential first step for Saudi Arabia to build a nuclear weapon if it chooses to. It also allows Saudi Arabia to bypass monitoring and inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency that the United States requires of other countries.
Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA (the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal) and his failure to negotiate effectively with Iran has already made a nuclear Iran more likely. The inconsistency of permitting Saudi Arabia to pursue enrichment capability while demanding Iran have zero enrichment will only make a durable agreement with Iran more difficult.
“This policy reverses 50 years of U.S. leadership in the global nonproliferation architecture and increases the risk of other countries pursuing enrichment and reprocessing as part of building a latent nuclear weapons capacity,” said Thomas Countryman, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, who led negotiations of previous 123 agreements.
“As someone who does believe in both the U.S. civil nuclear program and the value of American cooperation in other countries’ development of peaceful nuclear use, I am nevertheless deeply opposed to this deal with Saudi Arabia,” said Ambassador Laura Kennedy, former U.S. Representative to the Conference on Disarmament and Acting U.S. Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “To agree to any nuclear cooperation without that partner accepting the absolute minimum of the Additional Protocol under the IAEA would be antithetical to U.S. national security interests and would set a dangerous precedent throughout this volatile region including efforts to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.”
“The United States is in the middle of a war with Iran, and the administration continues to claim time and time again that we ‘cannot allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,’ and yet in all the regional chaos and the failed efforts to come to another Iran nonproliferation nuclear deal, we are agreeing to a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia,” said Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. “It is not clear that there is a strategy for the region and a way forward for nuclear nonproliferation, despite our persistent rationale for our war with Iran, which is to prevent them from developing a nuclear weapon.”
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