Improving Saudi-Israeli ties shouldn’t breed nuclear bombs

All eyes are currently riveted on Israel’s ground war in Gaza, but it’s not too soon to consider what comes next — a U.S.-brokered deal to normalize Israeli-Saudi relations. Before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, President Joe Biden had already offered Riyadh a formal defense commitment and civil nuclear energy cooperation including enriching uranium — a process that can bring a state within weeks of acquiring a bomb.

Is this the best way to weld a lasting peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel? Hardly. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has repeatedly threatened to build nuclear bombs to counter Iran. A Saudi Arabia with uranium enrichment sets up a risky proliferation cascade. If Tehran and Riyadh build the bomb, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey and Egypt — all of which have nuclear technology thanks to cooperation agreements with the U.S. — will want nuclear weapons of their own.

This should cause a pause. At the very least, it recommends weighing any U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal more seriously than current U.S. law requires — i.e., with little more than a presidential announcement. Instead, Congress should treat it as deliberately as it does bilateral trade agreements, which require majority approvals in both houses. Israeli-Saudi normalization should not be linked to a U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal. It should be hived off and considered separately.

Assuming Biden stays his current course, though, an announcement of a “historic” normalization package that includes a formal nuclear agreement is likely sometime next year. Even now, normalization — and its nuclear and nonnuclear sweeteners — are in play. MBS says so. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says so. Biden and his top foreign policy counselors say so.

Before joining Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the UAE in recognizing Israel, MBS, though, has asked for a hefty pound of nuclear flesh — help in enriching uranium. This is the very bomb-connected activity Iran has been spooking the world with. If Washington won’t help here, MBS says Riyadh could turn to China, which is already assisting Saudi Arabia in building a uranium milling plant. Most Saudis see enriching uranium as a sovereign right that the Kingdom must exercise.          

The question is why. MBS’s energy minister maintains Riyadh wants to mine, mill and enrich uranium to exploit rich domestic uranium reserves for the purpose of fueling a future Saudi fleet of power reactors. Yet, recent uranium prospecting in Saudi Arabia has only found “extremely uneconomic” deposits. Link this with MBS’s repeated threats to get the bomb and his reluctance to adopt anything but a minimal safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the hand-wringing begins.

But it gets worse. As Biden entertains MBS’s enrichment demands, he has to worry that the UAE, which foreswore enrichment as part of its nuclear agreement with the U.S., will demand equal treatment as the deal allows if Washington offers more generous nuclear terms to the UAE’s neighbors. Allow the Saudis to enrich, then, and the UAE could be next, followed by others. How this will deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions is anybody’s guess.

Under the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, all Biden needs to do to finalize a Saudi nuclear deal is announce it and let the text sit with Congress for 90 consecutive legislative days. If super majorities in both houses fail to reject or revise it, the agreement automatically becomes law. Bundling a U.S.-Saudi nuclear agreement with Israeli-Saudi normalization will likely cause Congress to avoid dedicated hearings on the nuclear deal to instead focus solely on normalization.

This isn’t inevitable, though. Members from both chambers and parties previously introduced legislation to require both houses to vote on any Saudi nuclear deal allowing enrichment. Three days before Hamas attacked Israel, 20 senators wrote a letter to the White House demanding any U.S.-Saudi agreement prohibit Saudi enrichment and require Saudi Arabia to open itself up to the IAEA’s most stringent inspections.

These same senators are likely to raise probing questions. Can inspectors detect diversions of enriched uranium early enough to block a Saudi nuclear bomb? Can anyone keep MBS from seizing “protected” nuclear facilities? Iran used its safeguarded power reactor at Bushier as a covert acquisition front to secure nuclear weapons-related goods. U.S. intelligence got the details too late to stop it. Could the Saudis do the same? 

Presumably, the White House would prefer not having to field such questions while selling a package that’s likely to contain contentious U.S. security guarantees. That would recommend keeping any U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal out of the initial package. The White House could choose to do this, but Congress ought to ensure it by requiring both houses to approve any nuclear cooperative agreement cut with any nation whose leader has publicly threatened to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty or demanded to enrich uranium. Today, that nation would be Saudi Arabia.

Eric Gomez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Henry Sokolski is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.