1-2-3: The Third Islamic Bomb Will Be Saudi

Last Wednesday in Washington, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, signed a framework agreement on nuclear cooperation binding the two countries for the next 30 years. This agreement is anything but technical or insignificant. Negotiated over the past five years, it marks a major turning point in U.S. nuclear policy abroad; it also probably heralds the birth of a future Saudi atomic bomb, the third in the Muslim world, after Pakistan’s and the one now taking shape in Iran.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had dreamed of such an agreement ever since coming to power in 2015. It allows Riyadh to take a first, crucial step in response to Iran’s nuclear program, because MBS had publicly stated that if Iran succeeded in acquiring a nuclear weapon, then “Saudi Arabia would do the same.”

It was precisely because of the risk of nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East that the Biden administration had dragged its feet and imposed a series of conditions: before providing any U.S. assistance to Saudi Arabia’s future nuclear program, Biden required Saudi Arabia finally to normalize relations with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords and, like the United Arab Emirates, to agree to renounce uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing.

Those two conditions have now been abandoned, even though, faced with criticism from Congress, Trump today claims the opposite, amid complete confusion…

At a time when war has resumed in the Straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, when America is bombing Iran, which in turn is striking its Arab neighbors, including the Saudis, Trump is yielding on one essential point: the agreement, presented as purely “civilian,” will allow Saudi Arabia to build uranium-enrichment and plutonium-reprocessing facilities on its own soil, both essential to the production of military fissile material.

The civilian aspect is reflected in the very name of the “1-2-3” agreement, after Section 123 of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act (AEA), as amended by subsequent non-proliferation laws. Section 123 sets out nine demanding non-proliferation criteria, but does not prohibit enrichment or reprocessing, which are subject to stringent conditions and to a written determination by the president that such an agreement will contribute to the security of the United States, with the whole arrangement then subject to congressional review within 90 days. In two secret letters appended to the agreement, MBS, who claims that his country has abundant uranium reserves, secured a commitment that enrichment facilities would be built by the Americans within two years, subject to Washington’s approval. In return, Westinghouse will supply a substantial number of AP1000 nuclear power plants, with Saudi Arabia undertaking not to use any other Russian, Chinese, Korean, or French supplier…

This makes clear the strategic significance of the agreement and the scale of Trump’s gift to MBS: the price to be paid to keep Saudi Arabia within the American fold, despite the doubts created by the fiasco of Trump’s war against Iran, despite Riyadh’s refusal to allow U.S. Navy fighter jets tasked with protecting navigation in the Gulf to fly through Saudi airspace, and, above all, despite Saudi Arabia’s rapprochement with Iran under Beijing’s auspices.

But Trump’s gift carries major consequences. First for Iran: it is difficult to deny the Iranians the right to enrich uranium—which was the main argument for this war—when that same right is being granted to the Saudis. And if that right is granted to Riyadh, why should it not also be granted to the Emiratis, who in 2009 had to agree to give it up by accepting a so-called “Gold Standard” agreement prohibiting any potentially military activity? Or to the Turks and the Egyptians, who are hardly likely to give up the military option in the face of Iran and, tomorrow, Saudi Arabia? In short, Trump has opened Pandora’s box himself. Yet another disaster in this war without a strategy, where one improvisation leads to the next…

Pierre Lellouche
23/7/26