What we know about the nuclear deal between the US and Saudi Arabia
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What is the new U.S.–Saudi nuclear agreement and who announced it?
It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, a landmark nuclear deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It would allow Saudi Arabia to build a nuclear program for civilian purposes like energy development. The agreement would need approval from Congress, but already, questions about nuclear weapons have come up. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday.
Suffice it to say, the U.S. is not going to reach any agreement with any country in the world that leads to the risk of proliferation.
Consider this. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have reached an agreement about developing a nuclear program. What do we know about it, and how could it affect the region? From NPR, I'm Juana Summers.
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It's Consider This from NPR. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have agreed to the development of a nuclear program.
What does the deal propose for Saudi Arabia's civilian nuclear program?
The U.S. would provide technology for the Saudis to develop a civilian nuclear program. Matthew Bunn is a former advisor to the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Clinton administration. He's now a nuclear proliferation expert at Harvard University. Hi, Matthew. Good to be here. So just start by telling us, if you can, why does Saudi Arabia say it wants a civilian nuclear program?
Well, they say that they would like to make nuclear energy to cover their domestic needs so they can export more of their oil and make more money. But they also want to provide the foundation over time for having more options to move toward nuclear weapons should they feel the need.
And on the flip side then, why would the United States want to provide the kingdom with nuclear technology?
Well, the United States, first of all, wants a strong relationship with the kingdom, given its vast oil reserves and role in the global oil market. But secondly, the United States has nuclear companies that would like the business. And would like to see nuclear energy around the world expand to help cope with both energy poverty and climate change.
And what kinds of rules or safeguards perhaps could be put into a deal that would prevent Saudi Arabia from using this technology to develop weapons versus the goal of developing a civilian nuclear program?
Well, unfortunately, the Trump administration dropped an insistence on what the United States has been insisting with many countries, that they accept the broader set of international inspections included in what's called the Additional Protocol. Instead, the Trump administration has worked out a bilateral U.S.-Saudi set of inspection arrangements that haven't yet been revealed to the public exactly what they are, but apply only to what the U.S. would provide, not to the overall nuclear program in Saudi Arabia.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the U.S. would not sign any deal that would lead to nuclear proliferation. But from what you understand at this point, are those safeguards included in this deal?
So when Secretary Rubio was a senator, he cosponsored legislation that would have required, before any nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia could go into force, that Saudi Arabia confess to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist, and accept the far-reaching inspections called for under what's called the Additional Protocol and accept a ban on both uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, the key technologies you can use to make nuclear weapons material.
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