The Trump-Saudi-Israel drama

0:00President Trump announced a big nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia last week. Energy, not weapons. Weapons usually come later. But what makes this one kind of wacky was that Trump had to immediately walk his own deal back. Turns out people were big mad that the deal appeared to leave out one of our allies in the Middle East. Maybe you've heard of Israel. So Trump says, JK, this deal is contingent upon Saudi Arabia signing on to the Abraham Accords. In case you forgot about Abe, he's a landmark set of agreements between Arab states and Israel to normalize relations. Normalization means basically play nice, set up embassies, talk about trade, security, that sort of thing.

0:35The point is, that's not in the deal. But Trump's people are going on the TV and saying, We are in discussions with the Saudis about coming into normalization with Israel. All this as Benjamin Netanyahu travels to Washington to meet with the president on Tuesday. Awkward. Two guys named Michael are going to help us wrap our heads around this big bad deal on today's Explained from Vox.

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2:05You're listening to Today Explained. Michael Gordon writes about national security for The Wall Street Journal, and he's been all over this Saudi Arabia deal. I did a lot of reporting on this, and I've been tracking this issue really since the first Trump administration. And what's interesting about this, and it's important to understand the context and the history, is this issue was explored during President Trump's first term in office and then during President Biden's term in office. In fact, President Biden was prepared to go through with a civil nuclear cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia, but only on certain conditions.

2:42He had a plan that would sort of provide something for everyone. There could have been a U.S.-Saudi nuclear cooperation deal, which basically means the U.S. provides the technology to Saudi Arabia. And the American companies do a lot of the work. But that was going to be conditional on Saudi Arabia establishing formal diplomatic relations with Israel. That was under Biden. And there were other aspects to it. Biden envisioned a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia would be the only defense treaty the U.S. has with a state in the region. The U.S. doesn't have one with Israel. And because the conditions for Saudi normalization are a credible pathway toward a Palestinian state, there was something in it for the Palestinians as well.

3:31All of that was basically undermined when Hamas attacked Israel and all that was essentially put on the shelf. What happened under President Trump was he revived one portion of that, which was the civil nuclear agreement. It was signed, and there's nothing in the agreement about normalization. So President Biden was also interested in a deal of this sort. But is it not true that for years, the United States refused to help Saudi Arabia develop a civilian nuclear program? Well, the U.S. proliferation policy for a long time had been to try to discourage the spread of potentially dangerous nuclear technology in the Middle East.

4:20And for example, there is a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates. It's known as the gold standard. and it's called the gold standard because the United Arab Emirates has reactors purchased from South Korea but with American technology but it gave up the right to enrich uranium on its own territory or reprocess spent fuel. It explicitly relinquished that. In fact there's no right it just said it committed itself not to do that. It also committed itself to the most wide-ranging inspections. What's striking about this deal with Saudi Arabia, under Biden and under Trump, is it doesn't meet the gold standard.

5:08The Saudis want the option to have the enrichment of uranium. They want a complete fuel cycle on their own territory. And they simply won't agree to the additional protocol, which is an IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency kind of process that provides for the most wide-ranging inspections. They won't adopt that. That's what most of the controversy is about. Let's talk about the conditions, if you don't mind. Maybe now's a good time to just ask explicitly, what is in this deal? Well, that's an important question because they haven't, even though I spoke to administration officials who spelled out a lot of these conditions, and even though the administration has confirmed the accuracy of the Wall Street Journal article, they haven't really been put in a press release or anything of the kind.

5:58But the conditions are as follows. First of all, it's a 30-year deal. That's a long time. Yeah. And that's a lot of potential revenue for an American companies. Second, there's something close to exclusivity for American companies in this deal. The Russians and the Chinese can't be part of it. And that's important because for President Trump, this is like a MAGA diplomacy gone wild. This is tens of billions of dollars potentially for the American nuclear industry, which has not been thriving, coming our way. And that's how it's been advertised by the U.S. Energy Department. That's an important thing.

6:45So 30 years, exclusivity. exclusivity. The other thing about it is that it opens the door to enrichment of uranium on Saudi soil. Now, I've seen a lot of senior officials go on television and say that's not part of the deal. They're going with American companies, American workers, but there is no enrichment envisioned in this plan. Any agreement that we would make on civil nuclear energy with Saudi Arabia or any other country is going to have safeguards in place to ensure that those cannot ever be turned into a weapons program. I mean, that's the gold standard. It is part of the deal. It's part of the deal that was briefed to me, and everyone's confirmed the accuracy of the report, but it's structured in a very careful way.

7:26There's to be a two-year study about whether enrichment of uranium on Saudi soil is commercially viable and makes sense for what the Saudi civil nuclear ambitions are. a two-year study once the agreement takes effect. And the presumption is the Saudis want enrichment on their soil. So let's take this scenario. Two-year study, decide that uranium enrichment for civil purposes is worth doing. American companies would then be involved in building this under a so-called black box arrangement in which the sensitive nuclear technology is not shared with the Saudis. That's one scenario. Let me give you a second scenario.

8:14You come to the end of the two years, and the Saudis say, well, we're ready to have you build us for a gazillion dollars a nuclear enrichment, the uranium enrichment site. And the Americans say, no, we don't think it makes a lot of sense. We think you should import your fuel the way the UAE does. We don't want to go that route. But according to the terms of the agreement, the U.S. has the right to do that two years from now. In that case, under the terms of the agreement, the Saudis would not be able to seek another partner to help them do this enrichment or enrich on their own for a decade. So that's how the agreement is structured.

9:04And that's what I expect the Congress will see.

9:12Why did the United States want this? You keep talking about making lots of money. Is it just to support our nuclear industry? Is that it? That's a big part of it. But it's not only that. It's to freeze out Russia, China, France, other countries who would otherwise be the vendors and perhaps under less rigorous provisions. So the argument for doing this and the part of the Trump administration was, let's help our own nuclear industry at home in a big way. If the U.S. wasn't going to be part of it, it didn't mean it wasn't going to happen. It just meant it would happen without the U.S. So those are the three arguments that were kind of put forward.

9:59But, you know, there hasn't been a lot of public debate about this. This is something that was carried out rather quietly behind closed doors. Everybody knew Trump was sort of up to it. But unless you spend your life, you know, studying nuclear proliferation and nuclear energy, say 99 percent of Americans would not have been aware this was this deal was being hatched. So help me understand something. The United States gets in there early, freezes out Russia and China, gets to make a bunch of money. It's a shot in the arm to our nuclear industry. But does that still encourage other actors in the region to pursue their own programs, potentially with Russia and China?

10:43It could. And it could because you're sort of legitimizing the spread of nuclear technology. Here's how this could go wrong. One, other countries say, well, they do it. We want it. and we want it with however we can get it, with whatever nations we can get it, and we're not going to adhere to the gold standard like UAE, and maybe we'll do it with the U.S., maybe we'll do it with other countries. That's one way it would encourage proliferation. Two, there's a provision of the agreement with the UAE, the so-called gold standard agreement I've talked so much about, that says if there's an arrangement in the region that is less than the gold standard, less than what we, the UAE, agreed to, we reserve the right to renegotiate, to try to renegotiate this agreement.

11:32In other words, the UAE can now come back and say, well, wait a second, we agreed to this, no enrichment, you know, these very stringent provisions. So what's going to happen now? Will the Trump administration insist that the deal be contingent on normalization? will it eventually amend this position and say, well, that's aspirational because it's a potential deal killer. And then the American nuclear industry won't get all the billions of dollars the energy secretary is talking about. And then the U.S. won't have exclusivity in Saudi Arabia in their civil nuclear program that the energy department is touting.

12:17How do you square this circle? And right now, the administration doesn't have an answer. And so this agreement, you know, I think the thing to look for in the weeks and months ahead is, is this normalization requirement somehow diluted? Does it become a goal instead of a requirement? Because I think logically that's pretty much the most one can expect if you look at the current trends in the Middle East, what's happening in Gaza, what's happening in Israel. And there's another way this thing could potentially not go forward in a sense, some aspects of it. Let's say the two-year study is not completed during the Trump administration.

13:05Let's say it drifts into the next American administration. Well, please tell me who's going to be our next president. John Ossoff. In the volatile American politics, right? And if it's John Ossoff, he's going to come in and say, thank you. We don't want to do enrichment in Saudi Arabia. That's off the table. Sorry about that, guys. But, you know, we built your two power reactors, but enrichment facilities not in the cards. So due to the vagaries of politics in the United States, some aspects of this deal are not exactly locked in. It could be a win-win or it could blow up in everybody's face.

13:56The View from Israel, when Today Explained continues.

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17:20You are listening to Today Explained. Michael Koplow, I'm the Chief Policy Officer at Israel Policy Forum. How excited do you guys get when Prime Minister Netanyahu is visiting Washington, D.C.? Well, when Prime Minister Netanyahu is here, and I believe this is going to be the sixth or seventh time since President Trump returned to office, it always creates a lot of news. So I don't know that excited is the word, but it certainly makes me busier. Okay. And he's, of course, visiting the District of Columbia tomorrow to meet with President Trump. How tense do you think things will be compared to all those other visits?

18:07I suspect this will be among the most tense meetings that they have had because there are a number of issues on the table where President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are on different pages. The issue that they used to be on the same page about was Iran. And I don't think that is the case anymore. As we've seen the Iran war unfold, the Israeli view is still the view that they had at the outset of the war, which is that this is necessary to deal with Iran's nuclear program, with its ballistic missiles, with its proxies. And ultimately, what the Israelis wanted to see and what they still want to see is a different regime in Iran.

18:48President Trump may still share those goals, but it's pretty clear that as the war has not gone the way he anticipated, he's looking for an exit strategy, and his main focus is the Strait of Hormuz, which is not something that the Israelis care about at all. So I think at this point, when Prime Minister Netanyahu arrives at the White House tomorrow, he's probably going to try to convince the president that the original goal should be on the table, that the U.S. and Israel should keep going, and President Trump seems to have a different view of things. And on top of that, insult to injury, not sure how you'd phrase it, but we have this new deal with Saudi Arabia that seems to have, on some level, taken Israel by surprise.

19:35It absolutely took Israel by surprise.

19:40When the deal was announced on Wednesday, it was a deal to provide Saudi Arabia with nuclear power and nuclear infrastructure. There was no mention of Israel. There was no mention of normalization. There's no mention of anything outside of the bounds of a nuclear agreement. President Trump on Thursday, following widespread criticism, not only in Israel, but in media outlets here in the United States, put out his Truth Social, where he said that the deal is absolutely contingent on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. Truth Social. The civil nuclear deal. There will be no enrichment of material being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use, such as the ones that Iran and UAE and others already have will be approved, but it's totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.

20:45The United States is not opposed to the civil, non-enriched nuclear facilities. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. And what's curious about that is that when the deal was announced, there was no mention of it, and the deal was actually signed. So either the president is intending to change the terms of the deal after it's been signed, or he's willing to back out of it if this new condition is not met. or, and I suspect that this is the actual answer, he will secure some sort of commitment from the Saudis to examine joining the Abraham Accords at some point down the road when Israel has met a number of conditions and there's been progress toward a Palestinian state.

21:34And that way, he can say that he has secured a commitment from the Saudis to do this eventually, and the Saudis can stay where they are, which is not wanting to normalize with Israel until there is real progress toward Palestinian statehood. And if that is how it unfolds, it will leave the Israelis behind. And I think this comes as a pretty big shock to them, given that President Trump's previous policy was that a deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia would involve normalization. And that was also President Biden's policy. So Prime Minister Netanyahu is coming here, not only with some discomfort on Iran, but I think some real discomfort on this Saudi nuclear deal.

22:21Was Netanyahu himself surprised by this deal? Do we know? You would think they're in cahoots. I think he must have been surprised by this deal. It is true that Trump and Netanyahu have seemed to have had a very cushy relationship, not only during this term, but during President Trump's first term as well. But it's not a relationship of equals. And we've seen particularly over the past few months, I think in response to criticism here in the United States over the role that Israel and the role that the prime minister may have had in convincing President Trump to go to war, President Trump repeatedly talked about the fact that he is in charge, that Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to do what he says, that he is the decider and Prime Minister Netanyahu is not.

23:13Fine, he'll do whatever I want him to do. He's a very good man. He'll do whatever I want him to do. Without the United States, there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel, because no other president was willing to do what I did. So, yes, I do think they have a good relationship, but President Trump, at least publicly, seems to be signaling that he is in charge and he wants everybody to know that. So I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu undoubtedly is feeling some stress in this relationship. And when he shows up here tomorrow, he's going to do whatever he can to try and repair any rifts that there are.

23:53Israel wanted this war but hates this deal that the president may very likely complete with Saudi Arabia. Did they miscalculate somewhere in here? Because it feels very much like this deal is an outcome of this war. I think the Israelis have miscalculated in a number of ways. And the biggest is that consistently, since 2017 or 2018, you hear Israeli officials, political officials, security officials, even ordinary Israelis, talk routinely about President Trump being the best friend that Israel has ever had and exhibiting a faith in President Trump that he will never do anything that will hang Israel out to dry.

24:42This has been a great relationship because he's been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House. And he respects me. I respect him. We always find a way to work out our differences. And a lot of what they've done has proceeded on that assumption. And even though everybody is aware of President Trump's transactional nature, even though everybody is aware that he is relatively volatile, that he flips on policy issues all the time, the Israelis had this faith that they would always be an exception to that rule. And I think what we're seeing is that they're not necessarily an exception to that rule.

25:24And it's important to stress that when it comes to this Saudi nuclear deal, The problem for the Israelis is not just that it was signed on Wednesday without any hint of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia being part of it. The deal itself, even if there is a normalization component, is problematic for the Israelis because this deal is not as stringent as other deals that the U.S. has signed. It may open the door for countries that have signed more restrictive agreements in the region, like the UAE, to do the same. And ultimately, all of this is a bet that the trajectory of Saudi Arabia is going to continue, that it's going to continue modernizing, continue becoming more moderate and pragmatic, continue improving relations with Israel.

26:14If that's not the case, once you've handed the Saudis a nuclear program, that's irreversible. People shouldn't forget that Iran's nuclear program started off also as a civilian nuclear program that the United States provided for it under the days of the Shah. So for Israelis, the normalization part of this is absolutely worrisome. But the deal itself is problematic, too. And I think that's where the Israelis are feeling panicked.