Only Congress Stands Between Saudi Arabia and Nuclear Weapons

Victor Gilinsky, Henry Sokolski

Security, Middle East

Congress must act now in anticipation if it is to stop an arrangement that would allow Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to outfit himself with everything he needs for a bomb.

There is an eerie lull in the news about the proposed U.S.-Saudi nuclear agreement that Washington has talked about for months. Could it be that the administration no longer supports a sweetheart deal with its favorite crown prince? It seems too good to be true. Alas, it surely is. The lure of Saudi money is irresistible to the Trump White House and its nuclear camp followers, and they will be back. Congress must act now in anticipation if it is to stop an arrangement that would allow Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to outfit himself with everything he needs for a bomb. If Congress waits to see what lands on its table, then it will be too late.

If President Donald Trump presents a fully negotiated agreement text to Congress, then the only way Congress can reject it is by mustering a two-thirds vote of opposition in both houses, which in their current configuration is a near political impossibility. Altogether, the law, and Congress’s decades-old passivity in the face of Executive action, favor the president.

So why has Trump not done so already? It can only be because he has not been able to negotiate sufficiently advantageous terms. In truth, he doesn’t have much to work with other than the threat that Saudi security ultimately rests on American power. There is no longer an American vendor of nuclear power plants. Westinghouse, which is often spoken of in this context, has been Japanese-owned for years. Its managerial incompetence led to the collapse of one of the only two U.S. nuclear construction projects, and the near failure of the other. It went through bankruptcy and is now owned by a Canadian conglomerate (albeit one with financial ties to the Trump family). It is an altogether unattractive partner for an international construction project. The best it can realistically hope for is to piggy-back on a Saudi deal with a more solid vendor, the prime candidate being Korean.