Is Trump’s Saudi nuclear deal set to trigger a Middle East arms race?
He failed to articulate a persuasive argument for the Iran war and now a poorly negotiated deal with Riyadh has only compounded the danger writes Foreign Editor David Pratt
Among his many controversial traits, a tendency towards double standards sits high on the list.
If ever confirmation of this were needed, just cast your mind back to April, when US President Donald Trump reiterated that in Iran: “There will be no enrichment of uranium.”
On the face of it, Trump’s message appeared clear cut and, to that end, the
US-Israel war against the Islamic Republic was – along with regime change – aimed at preventing Tehran from possessing an atomic bomb.
But fast-forward just a few months and Trump appears now to have done a deal with Iran’s great rival Saudi Arabia that could, say some experts, put it on a trajectory to enrich its own fuel for nuclear reactors.
So far, so typically Trump, some might argue. But as if such duplicity were not bad enough, Trump then added another characteristic of his fickle decision-making thinking by insisting that the Saudi deal was conditional on Riyadh normalising relations with Israel.
“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 is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform last Thursday.
Trump’s intervention, insisting that the deal was subject to recognition of Israel, arriving as it did some 16 hours after the initial announcement, appeared to come as late news to the Saudis.
For years now the Gulf kingdom has long insisted that their country will not establish formal relations with Israel until there is a clear path for Palestinian statehood, which Israel’s government staunchly opposes.
It came as late news, too, it would appear,
to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his team at the Washington Energy Department who some American media reports suggest jumped the gun in announcing the deal, triggering the social media backlash from Trump.
TRUMP, so the media speculation goes, added on the “normalisation” with Israel condition to teach Wright and his team a lesson for getting ahead of themselves.
Whatever the truth behind such internal bickering, the Saudi deal now appears somewhat in limbo, though should it go ahead as planned, will renew fears that Trump is triggering a Middle East nuclear arms race.
It’s not that there is anything new in US nuclear co-operation deals with countries in the region.
But back when America first made such a deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2009, the safeguards and conditions surrounding the deal were, according to US officials at the time, “gold standard”.
For starters, the Emiratis had to forgo domestic uranium enrichment and reprocessing, and sign up to the Additional Protocol, a follow-on to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which provides for tough inspections.
All these conditions were met, leaving the UAE with four reactors that now supply 25% of the country’s electricity.
Saudi Arabia stares down Trump whiplash on nuclear deal
The text of the agreement is not public, but reported details include a 30-year, multibillion-dollar deal giving American companies a central role in developing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear infrastructure.
“at this juncture,” Trump’s demand for Saudi-Israel ties looks likely to delay implementation of the deal.
Saudi Arabia views Israel as the obstacle toward normalization, insisting on a pathway toward a Palestinian state, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to block.
Comments:by Laura Kelly – 07/27/26, https://thehill.com/policy/international/5992914-saudi-us-nuclear-deal-stalls/
Saudi Arabia is sending no signals it will accept President Trump’s after-the-fact condition that Riyadh establish ties with Israel as part of a nuclear energy deal with the United States. In fact, its leaders haven’t even conceded that the deal signed last week is off.
Normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia was long a central pillar of a package deal for the U.S. to partner with the kingdom in building its civil nuclear program — negotiated during the first Trump administration and then the Biden administration.
But that demand appeared absent when Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced Wednesday that the U.S. signed a major deal with Saudi Arabia for American companies to jointly build a civil nuclear program in the oil-rich country.
Mohammed Alhamed, a Saudi geopolitical analyst and president of the consultancy group Saudi Elite, said Trump’s demands about the Abraham Accords “do not change the substance of the agreement.”
“If Saudi recognition of Israel had been a formal condition for the nuclear deal, it would have been negotiated before the agreement was signed and explicitly included in its terms,” he said.
“I believe President Trump was primarily speaking to a domestic political audience by reassuring Israel and its supporters in Washington. That does not necessarily mean Saudi Arabia has changed its position.”
Trump on Friday pushed back on reporting that he was caught off guard by Wright solidifying the nuclear agreement.
“No, nobody got out ahead. I mean, I just say that in order to do it, they have to be a member of the Abraham Accords,” he said in the Oval Office with Wright behind him.
“It was always understood, and Chris knew, and Saudi Arabia knew, that if they didn’t join the Abraham Accords — I’m not going to do the deal.”
The Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., declined to comment on the record about the status of the nuclear deal or whether it was considering joining the 2020 deal establishing ties between Israel and Muslim-majority countries.
Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said Saudi officials are likely taking a deep breath and withholding any actions that could trigger Trump to further bear down on his demand.
“I think if you’re the Saudis, you’re like, all right, let’s kind of see where this goes. Maybe we’ll gradually start having some conversations … Does Trump really want to kind of scuttle this big deal? Which for Trump, it’s a big deal because it’s theoretically big business for U.S. companies. So do you really want to scuttle that?” he asked.
“I think they’re just going to take a pause, take a deep breath, have some quiet conversations, and see where this lands.”
A key test for Trump is if he transmits the nuclear agreement to Congress in the coming weeks, before Republicans possibly lose majorities in the House and Senate.
Once the agreement is transmitted to Congress, lawmakers have 90 days to either oppose the deal or allow it to proceed. If Trump delays in sending the agreement after September, he’ll almost certainly have to contend with slimmer GOP margins or Democratic majorities.
The text of the agreement is not public, but reported details include a 30-year, multibillion-dollar deal giving American companies a central role in developing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear infrastructure.
“We’ve been pushing the U.S. government for decades to get it done,” said Christopher Guith, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute.
Guith said, “at this juncture,” Trump’s demand for Saudi-Israel ties looks likely to delay implementation of the deal.
Daniel Shapiro, who served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Middle East under the Biden administration, said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman always viewed a partnership with the U.S. on nuclear energy as the “holy grail,” adding the Saudis are particularly focused on achieving “special exemptions” permitting possible uranium enrichment as a hedge against Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon.
“The crown prince has always said that he would ensure Saudi Arabia matched that capability if Iran got it,” he said.
There are different phases of the deal, including a two-year feasibility study to determine if uranium enrichment should take place in Saudi Arabia, instead of having such nuclear fuel shipped in by the United States. That provision raised flags for former diplomats and nuclear nonproliferation experts as a potential pathway for Riyadh to develop a nuclear weapon. Other reported details raised concern of lax oversight on nuclear safety and nonproliferation.
Riyadh is unlikely to throw out the deal with the U.S. because of Trump’s demands on Israel.
“They hope the agreement moves forward, that Trump will back down from his tweet,” Shapiro said of the president’s Truth Social post.
While Russia and China are alternatives for civil-nuclear cooperation, Saudi Arabia is demonstrating it sees more value in a long-term partnership with the U.S. — despite Trump’s whiplash diplomacy, growing partisanship in the Congress on foreign policy and the immense fallout from the war with Iran.
“The Saudis really want their security anchored in the United States,” said Ratney, who is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“So this is kind of a piece of that — If they’re going to develop nuclear energy, they would like it anchored in a relationship with the United States. That’s just where they’ve always been. … I don’t know that they’re going to see this as a reason to kind of brandish alternatives for their nuclear power.”
Alhamed, the Saudi consultant, said there are clear incentives for both the Trump administration and Riyadh to see the nuclear deal put into play.
“For the United States, the agreement strengthens a decades-long strategic partnership, supports American companies and the U.S. economy, and preserves U.S. influence,” he said.
“For Saudi Arabia, it advances the Kingdom’s long-term energy and economic transformation while reinforcing a trusted partnership with Washington.”
But it’s not clear if Riyadh or Trump are ready to move off their stances toward the Accords.
Saudi Arabia views Israel as the obstacle toward normalization, insisting on a pathway toward a Palestinian state, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to block. The long-serving Israeli leader is also heading into consequential elections on Oct. 27, where engaging on the issue of resolution with the Palestinians is radioactive for nearly all Israeli politicians.
Israel’s brutal response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, increasing violence and deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and the war in southern Lebanon have made it all but impossible for Riyadh to embrace Israel.
“As the leading Arab and Islamic country, Saudi Arabia carries broader regional responsibilities, making normalization difficult without meaningful progress on Palestinian rights and a credible pathway to a two-state solution,” Alhamed said.
Trump stuns Saudis by pinning nuclear deal to Israel ties
By AFPT, 24 July 2026, https://www.dailymail.com/wires/afp/article-16000561/Trump-stuns-Saudis-pinning-nuclear-deal-Israel-ties.html
President Donald Trump is making Israel a key part of the US nuclear deal with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
US President Donald Trump said Thursday that a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia depends on the kingdom recognizing Israel, throwing the agreement into turmoil just the day after it was signed.
The apparently new condition comes despite Riyadh having long resisted joining the so-called Abraham Accords with Israel, insisting on a pathway to a Palestinian state.
It was not mentioned in the civilian nuclear deal announced on Wednesday, which had appeared to be a major win for the Saudis even as Trump wages war on Iran over its nuclear program.
But Trump stunned the Saudis with his post on his Truth Social network saying the deal “will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”
The White House insisted that Trump had previously told Saudi Arabia the deal was contingent on recognizing Israel.
“The president is always the final dealmaker. He has said if they don’t join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
“The president has spoken directly with the Saudis about this in numerous conversations in the past, and the administration will continue to engage in those conversations.”
– ‘Historic leap’ –
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recognition by Saudi Arabia, a regional power and home to Islam’s holiest sites, would mark a “historic leap” forward for peace in the Middle East.
Leavitt said she did not know of any calls between Trump and Netanyahu following the announcement of the Saudi agreement.
There was no immediate reaction from Riyadh.
Should it go through, the deal to establish a civilian nuclear program in Saudi Arabia would generate billions of dollars for American companies.
But with Trump’s latest announcement, it was unclear whether it would ever see the light of day.
If Washington “tries to force normalization on Riyadh, it’s not likely to work out very well,” said H.A. Hellyer, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a leading UK defense and security think tank.
“Would Saudi decide to do a complete 180 on what it has declared for the past three years, or 30 years? Quite dubious,” he told AFP.
Critics have also insisted that the deal could precipitate a nuclear race in a region already battered by war.
One provision would potentially see US companies build a uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The US Energy Department made no mention of such a provision and did not offer comment when asked about it by AFP.
And Trump seemingly quashed it by saying on Truth Social that there would be “no enrichment of material!”
The deal will be submitted to Congress for review.
US lawmakers from both parties and Israeli officials have previously voiced opposition to such a project over fears Saudi Arabia could eventually convert it to develop nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that any civil nuclear agreement signed by Washington with another country “is going to be one that will have safeguards in place to ensure that it can’t be turned into a weapons program.”
– Proliferation concerns –
Riyadh, like Tehran, has long been adamant about its right to pursue a civilian nuclear program. Last year it signed a mutual defense pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan.
Policymakers have long feared that if Iran produced a nuclear weapon, the move would set off an arms race across the Gulf.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright dismissed concerns, insisting the deal was in Washington’s economic and strategic interest and involved the “highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation.”
The United States has agreements governing nuclear cooperation with more than 50 countries.
The Saudi deal meanwhile comes as Riyadh looks set to be dragged further into the Middle East war, with Yemen’s Houthi rebels starting to attack ships in the Red Sea to enforce what they say is a blockade on Saudi Arabia.
Trump vowed to punish both Iran and the Houthis if the attacks continue.
The US-Saudi nuclear deal
Learning that Saudi Arabia wants a nuclear programme is nothing new. But
news of an agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia this week set phones
around the world buzzing. No wonder. President Trump will have been at war
with Iran for six months to the day next Tuesday. If he’s that determined
to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons capability, why is he offering a
start-up deal to the Saudis? That’s pretty obscure, even by Trump’s
standards.
Labour Hub 25th July 2026
https://labourhub.org.uk/2026/07/25/the-us-saudi-nuclear-deal/
UK’s New Defence Minister Called Israel ‘Rogue State’
July 24, 2026, Dania Akkad Declassified UK, https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/24/uks-new-defence-minister-called-israel-rogue-state/
Late last July, as a famine unfolded in Gaza and Israeli settler attacks intensified in the West Bank, Wes Streeting texted a friend shortly before midnight.
“Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes,” the then health secretary told Peter Mandelson over WhatsApp.
“Their government talks the languages of ethnic cleansing and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.”
In messages that Streeting released earlier this year, he went on to tell Peter Mandelson, then U.K. ambassador to the U.S., that Israel was exhibiting “rogue state behaviour” in the West Bank where it was pushing ahead with annexation.
“Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers,” he said.
A year later, Streeting, appointed this week as defence secretary in Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s cabinet, is now in a position to act — or at least, a better one than when, as health secretary, he says he was “hitting up against a brick wall” behind the scenes, demanding “moral urgency” in Gaza.
Relatives of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes gathering around the bodies taken from the morgue of Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir el-Balah, Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. (Ashraf Amra / UNRWA /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0 igo)
But will he? Less than 24 hours in, the question was already being asked.
Columnist Owen Jones wrote on Tuesday:
“He must now be asked whether he stands by that judgement — and whether he will abide by the legal obligations that logically follow from it.”
Green MP Ellie Chowns wrote to Streeting, demanding answers about how he planned “to end the U.K.’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza”.
“We now have a Secretary of State in the UK Government who has made public their view that the Israeli government has committed war crimes during the genocide in Gaza.”
Zena Agha, interim director of the British Palestinian Committee, told Declassified that Streeting had “said the quiet part out loud” and now the question is what he will do about it.
“Will the doublespeak of the status quo require him to disavow what he knows to be true — as other ministers have before him?” Agha asked.
“Or will he respect international law and hold the perpetrators of war crimes to account?”
Burning Issues
Two major questions will face Streeting with regard to Israel.
—First is the U.K.-Israel military cooperation agreement and whether he plans to suspend it.
The agreement, signed in December 2020 without any publicity from the U.K. government, is said to incorporate a range of defence engagement activity between the two countries.
It has not been made public, with officials saying it is under wraps because it is being kept at a high level security classification.
But a Freedom of Information request showed that, as of last October, the agreement had been in place throughout the Gaza genocide without any modifications.
As the war on Gaza has continued, the agreement has come under sustained attack from MPs calling for it to be suspended. When asked about its status, ministers have repeatedly said the agreement is being reviewed, but as recently as April, it was “extant.”
—The second question is whether Streeting will release RAF surveillance footage captured over Gaza.
Since December 2023, the RAF and, more recently, an American company Sierra Nevada Corporation, contracted by the MoD, have flown hundreds of spy flights over the enclave.
Surveillance aircraft were operating above Gaza during the World Central Kitchen convoy attack in April 2024 that killed three British nationals.
Their families have repeatedly asked for the release of the footage, but the government has refused.
World Central Kitchen car after IDF strike, April 3, 2024. (Tasnim News Agency/ Wikimedia Commons /CC BY 4.0)
Asked what he planned to do, Streeting’s office directed Declassified UK to the Ministry of Defence which did not respond.
Despite his recent openness about his private positions on Israel, Streeting acknowledged in the WhatsApps to Mandelson that he has also “never been a shrinking violent [sic]” about the country.
“I’ve supported [Labour Friends of Israel] for over 20 years,” Streeting texted.
Agha called on Streeting, as an immediate first step, to release RAF footage after a massacre of 15 Palestinian aid workers in southern Gaza on March 23, 2025.
“This is just one case of blatant war crimes committed by Israeli forces – countless others that have yet to be told,” Agha said.
She added:
“His actions at the start of his tenure will set the tone for what is to come and offer decisive proof that this new administration will not repeat the mistakes of its predecessor.”
Proposed US-Saudi nuclear energy deal: What we know so far
Reports suggest the Trump administration backs a pact with Saudi Arabia allowing it to enrich uranium.
22 Jul 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/22/proposed-us-saudi-nuclear-energy-deal-what-we-know-so-far
United States President Donald Trump has approved an agreement that would allow Saudi Arabia to develop a civilian nuclear programme with the potential to enrich uranium on its own soil, marking a significant shift in longstanding US non-proliferation policy, according to media reports.
Citing people familiar with the discussions, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Trump is expected to ask Congress to approve the agreement, which could pave the way for US companies to help build Saudi Arabia’s nuclear industry.
The timing is likely to prove controversial, with the US saying one of the objectives of its military campaign against Iran is to prevent it from acquiring the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Critics say that allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium could weaken that message, even if the programme is intended for civilian use, while other commentators fear that raising nuclear enrichment levels could be misused.
Here’s what we know.
Why is this significant?
Saudi Arabia has long sought a civilian nuclear programme as part of plans to diversify its economy and reduce its dependence on oil.
Negotiations over US nuclear cooperation have stretched across multiple administrations. Under former President Joe Biden, talks were tied to a broader package that included Saudi recognition of Israel, according to The Times.
Those negotiations stalled after Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, but the Trump administration revived discussions, removing the normalisation requirement.
During Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the US last year, the two countries announced a framework for civilian nuclear cooperation, laying the groundwork for what they described as a long-term partnership built on non-proliferation standards.
What does the reported agreement say?
According to the reports, the agreement would last for 30 years and allow US companies, including Westinghouse, a Pittsburgh-based nuclear energy giant, to help develop Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear sector.
One of its most significant provisions would permit Saudi Arabia to pursue domestic uranium enrichment following a joint US-Saudi study.
Enriching uranium is not illegal and is used to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. However, the same technology can also produce highly enriched uranium suitable for nuclear weapons if enrichment continues to much higher levels.
Saudi Arabia has previously said it would seek a nuclear weapon if Iran were ever to acquire one, although Tehran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful.
Why are some experts concerned?
The reported agreement is expected to fall short of the standards accepted by some other US partners.
In 2009, the United Arab Emirates signed a so-called “123 Agreement” with Washington before opening its Barakah nuclear power plant, agreeing not to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel – a model that non-proliferation experts have often described as the “gold standard”.
Reports suggest the Saudi agreement would instead allow enrichment and may not require the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Additional Protocol, which gives inspectors broader powers to verify that nuclear material is not being diverted for military purposes.
Michael Horowitz, a geopolitical analyst, said the Saudi agreement would be “very consequential” for a number of reasons.
“The US reportedly agreed to a deal that falls both below the gold standard and doesn’t include the Additional Protocol – both of which are made to ensure a civilian programme doesn’t turn into a military one,” he said.
“This isn’t a detail: If Riyadh had wanted to just have US backing for a civilian programme, it would have done so years ago – with Washington’s blessing. In other words, the goal is to get US support for a deal that doesn’t fully exclude a pathway to a nuclear programme,” he added.
“That’s not to say that there aren’t guarantees. But guarantees are purely bilateral, and that means they will be entirely dependent” on the state of US-Saudi relations, said Horowitz.
Why would the US agree?
Supporters argue the agreement would strengthen US influence in the Gulf.
In a report submitted to Congress earlier this year, the Trump administration argued that expanding civilian nuclear cooperation would help maintain US leadership in the global nuclear industry while preventing strategic competitors from gaining influence in the kingdom.
The administration has also argued that Saudi Arabia’s growing electricity demand makes nuclear energy an increasingly important part of its long-term energy strategy, despite its vast oil resources and climate well suited for solar power.
Will Congress approve it?
Any civilian nuclear cooperation agreement must be submitted to Congress, which has the power to review and block so-called “123 agreements”.
Congress would need a two-thirds majority to block the proposed agreement and override any presidential veto.
The proposal is expected to face scrutiny from lawmakers in both parties over the safeguards governing Saudi uranium enrichment.
Some members of Congress and Israeli officials have said that permitting enrichment could leave open a future pathway to a Saudi nuclear weapons capability, even if the programme begins for civilian purposes.
Andrea Stricker, deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Nonproliferation Program, urged Congress to “block” the proposed agreement.
“If it does not, one hopes the policy will be reversed by a subsequent administration before too much damage is done in terms of watering down safeguards, setting negative precedents for other states, and failing to contain the spread of enrichment,” said Stricker.
Ukraine: America’s Enduring Proxy War on Russia
Eisenhower’s warning that US policy would be captured by a scientific-technological elite supplies a specific reason the US sustains the Ukraine war: Ukraine has become a unique, live-fire laboratory for AI warfare at scale
Henry Kissinger is famously credited with telling the truth to nations that the US would use and discard: To be an enemy of the United States may be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. – Ukraine is dying at American hands.
The deepest cruelty is that Russia sought, repeatedly and for 30 years, a security arrangement with the US in which both countries and their neighborhoods would live in peace, mutual respect, and indivisible security
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Sybil Fares July 22, 2026, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-proxy-war-in-ukraine
In his farewell address of January 1961, Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans against the “acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” and the danger that “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Sixty-five years on, Eisenhower’s warnings have been repeatedly and tragically vindicated. American democracy hangs by a thread, while the military-industrial complex, now including Silicon Valley, runs American foreign policy over the objections of the American people.
The aim is American primacy, meaning the unchallenged wealth, power, and prerogatives of American elites, unchecked by any other nation or group of nations. What this means in practice is that Wall Street, military contractors, Silicon Valley, and Big Oil control American foreign policy to maximize elite wealth and access to global resources, supply chains, and strategic choke points. The rest of the world is to fall in line.
The military-industrial complex deploys a toolkit that we summarize as “regime control,” directed at subordinating the rest of the world’s governments to the United States. The instruments used for regime control include the imposition or removal of trade barriers; the access to or denial of technologies; the introduction or removal of economic sanctions; the ownership and manipulation of foreign media; electoral interference of varying extent; political assassinations, color revolutions, CIA-backed coups; the instigation of overseas bank runs and the supply of emergency loans when states submit; the freezing and unfreezing of foreign assets; the targeting of foreign officials with corruption claims, extradition, or kidnapping; and, when none of these suffice for regime control, outright war. The US wars of choice (really, wars for regime control) are perpetual, and lucrative for the war industries, though the deep state typically prefers that other governments cave in without a fight.
Geopolitical Pivots and American Primacy
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard (1997) laid out the goal of regime control with remarkable candor. Eurasia is the board on which America’s global primacy must be secured. To succeed, America should dominate “geopolitical pivots,” meaning states that are unimportant to America per se but useful for weakening another major power. Brzezinski named key geopolitical pivots, the most important of which was Ukraine. He repeatedly proclaimed that Russia without Ukraine ceases to be a great power. He identified Iran as another pivot. Control over Iran secures America’s hold on the Persian Gulf, Mideast oil, and the Caspian region. It is no surprise that US wars rage in both places.
The US does not want security with mutual respect. It wants primacy, which is an altogether different thing.
This is important to understand the decisions of six seemingly different presidents, who all pursued one consistent Ukraine policy. Bill Clinton set out to enlarge NATO to Ukraine and other border states of Russia, counting on Russia being too weak to object. He and subsequent presidents assumed that Russia would ultimately accept its diminished global status, accept the reality of NATO on its borders, and settle into a subordinate role of supplying raw materials to the West within an American-ordered Eurasia.
Clinton launched NATO enlargement in the 1990s, over George Kennan’s warning that it was “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold-War era” and despite the legally binding assurances given by the US to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.” George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty and, at Bucharest in 2008, committed NATO to membership for Ukraine and Georgia, crossing what William Burns, then ambassador in Moscow and later CIA director, privately called “the brightest of all redlines” for the entire Russian elite.
Read more: Ukraine: America’s Enduring Proxy War on RussiaBarack Obama’s administration backed the 2014 Maidan overthrow of Ukraine’s elected, neutral government (we know this through Victoria Nuland’s intercepted call where she discusses choosing the next prime minister), and then supported the new regime’s bid to join NATO. Donald Trump, in his first term, sent Javelin systems to the US-backed regime in Kyiv to fight the breakaway, Russian-speaking Donbas. Joe Biden brushed aside Russia’s December 2021 draft security treaties without negotiating and scuttled the near-agreement between Russia and Ukraine at Istanbul in the spring of 2022, which would have ended the war. And so the war continues to this day.
Trump’s Vacuous Anti-War Campaign Promises
Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 as the man who would end America’s forever wars. This turned out to be far from the truth.
The year 2025 opened with theater including the Oval Office humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February, the taunt that Ukraine had “no cards,” and in March a week-long suspension of US intelligence sharing with Kyiv. That week proved two things. First, this is an American war: Deprived of US intelligence for only a few days, Ukraine’s deep-strike capacity and battlefield awareness visibly degraded. Second, the White House pressure was aimed not at peace with Moscow but at obedience from Kyiv. The US military spigot was reopened, and what followed, behind a proscenium of summits and phone calls, was the most systematic escalation of the American military role since 2022.
In June 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14307, “Unleashing American Drone Dominance,” directing the rebuilding of the American drone industrial base and instructing that the Pentagon “must be able to procure, integrate, and train using low-cost, high-performing drones.” In July, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth staged a drone demonstration at the Pentagon and stripped away procurement restrictions to “unleash” military drone dominance; the same month, on a call with Zelenskyy, Trump asked, according to the Financial Times’ later reporting, whether Ukraine could strike Moscow if given longer-range weapons.
From midsummer 2025, the US supplied the intelligence for Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign against Russian refineries, pipelines, and power stations, shaping route planning, altitude, timing, and mission decisions; by some officials’ account, setting the target priorities itself. In August came the Alaska summit, suggesting diplomacy, yet at the same time the sale of Extended Range Attack Munitions for Ukraine, with European allies paying. By October, Trump had formally authorized the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to hand Ukraine targeting data for strikes on Russian energy infrastructure deep inside Russia, a step the Biden administration itself had refused as too escalatory, while Washington pressed NATO allies to do the same and openly debated Tomahawks with the range to reach Moscow. Through it all, CIA Director John Ratcliffe kept the agency’s presence in Ukraine at its highest level, increased funding for its programs there, coordinated Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries by sharing intelligence on infrastructure vulnerabilities, and patiently guided Trump toward blessing the campaign. The United States, it emerged, had spent billions building Ukraine’s drone program from the start, in an effort backed by the CIA throughout.
Trump lies constantly, and much of it is the improvisation of a vain and careless man. But the consequential lying is systematic, and in one direction: in the service of the military-industrial complex.
The Laboratory
Eisenhower’s warning that US policy would be captured by a scientific-technological elite supplies a specific reason the US sustains the Ukraine war. Ukraine has become a unique, live-fire laboratory for AI warfare at scale: millions of drone sorties, a continuous adaptation race against a peer adversary’s electronic warfare, and thousands of hours of combat data that constitute the most valuable military AI asset on Earth.
At the center of this sits Palantir, born of CIA seed money, running the Pentagon’s Maven targeting enterprise, and threaded through the British security establishment via a revolving door that includes a former MI6 chief among more than 30 UK officials hired or contracted by the company. Its chief executive openly boasts that Palantir software performs “most of the targeting” done by Ukraine. In January 2026 Ukraine’s defense ministry announced that Palantir was building the “Brave1 Dataroom” to feed real battlefield data into the AI brains of interceptor drones; by May, minister and CEO were discussing expanded cooperation in battlefield analysis and military planning, the ministry promising to “transfer the war onto Russian territory.”
Nor is Iran a separate story from the Ukraine saga. Recall that in Brzezinski’s geography the arc from the Persian Gulf through the Caspian is the second great prize, with Iran as its keystone pivot. Ukrainian interceptor teams have deployed to Jordan against Iranian drones; the counter-drone systems proven against Russia are marketed to the Gulf. Two geopolitical pivots, one chessboard, and one ultimate source of these two wars of choice: the military-industrial complex.
Kissinger’s Admonition to Friends of the US
Henry Kissinger is famously credited with telling the truth to nations that the US would use and discard: To be an enemy of the United States may be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.
Ukraine is dying at American hands. Thirty years since Brzezinski pointed to Ukraine as the key geopolitical pivot for American primacy, Ukraine has been demographically hollowed and territorially truncated, with its energy grid pounded, its elections suspended, and its politics reduced to corrupted palace intrigues. This month’s rupture in Kyiv shows that in the midst of what Western coverage calls Ukraine’s great comeback, Zelenskyy dissolved his government for the fourth time in the war; dispatched his prime minister toward the Washington embassy to manage the “key partner;” and summarily sacked Mykhailo Fedorov, the popular minister celebrated as the architect of the drone ecosystem. A country truly winning its war does not behave this way.
The deepest cruelty is that Russia sought, repeatedly and for 30 years, a security arrangement with the US in which both countries and their neighborhoods would live in peace, mutual respect, and indivisible security. Yet the US does not want security with mutual respect. It wants primacy, which is an altogether different thing. In the process, it sacrifices Ukraine and Iran to its hubris. Peace in Ukraine requires only that the US relinquish the hubris it has maintained for decades that Russia can be pressured into surrender, and instead accept Ukraine as a neutral bridge between Europe and Russia rather than a geopolitical pivot to be used against Russia. Eisenhower foresaw why acceptance of peace would be so hard: The military-industrial complex does not merely influence policy; it defines it. Until the American people reclaim the democracy from Palantir, BlackRock, SpaceX, Chevron, and their ilk, the battlefield “laboratories” will stay open, and Ukraine will pay the fatal price for American “friendship.”
US signs landmark nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia
Nuclear experts and former officials in Israel – the US’s top ally in the Middle East – have voiced concern that the plan could ultimately lead to Saudi Arabia being able to develop a nuclear weapon – though other experts say that path would likely take decades and spark pushback from the international community.
James FitzGerald and Max Matza
The US and Saudi Arabia have signed a landmark deal that will allow the Gulf kingdom to develop a civilian nuclear programme.
The deal is described as a “peaceful nuclear co-operation agreement” that will provide “great access for American companies in the Saudi nuclear energy program” by the US energy department.
Text from the deal has not been made public, but US media report that it could allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium in the future – which can be used as fuel for power plants, but also to make nuclear bombs.
Experts say that would mark a first for the US and could run the risk of future nuclear proliferation in an already unstable region.
Trump’s nuclear deal with Saudis jettisons longstanding US demands
The US Department of Energy said a “bilateral safeguards agreement” had been signed along with the co-operation deal.
“Together, these two agreements lay the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances several priority economic and strategic objectives, including nuclear nonproliferation,” the statement said.
The Saudi government also released a statement saying the deal “represents an extension of existing co-operation between the two countries in the energy sector”, noting that it comes after the Saudi leader visited Washington last November.
The nuclear issue has been at the centre of the months-long US-Israeli conflict with Iran. The two nations say one of the reasons they attacked Iran in February was to prevent the country from ever developing a nuclear weapon – something that Tehran denies planning to do.
Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told CBS News in 2018 that his own nation was not planning to acquire a nuclear weapon, but that “without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible”.
Wednesday’s announcement came as fighting escalates between the US and Iran. Saudi Arabia, a longtime US ally, hosts several US bases that have been targeted by Iranian attacks. It also comes two days after Iran’s allies in Yemen, the Houthis, announced a “maritime blockade” against the kingdom.
Specific details of the nuclear deal have not been given but earlier media reports suggested that, after undertaking a joint study with the US, Saudi Arabia may be allowed to enrich uranium on its soil to produce fuel at a US-built enrichment facility, instead of relying on imported fuel.
This could be worth billions of dollars to the US, whose companies could be involved in building a facility to produce enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants but also to make nuclear bombs.
“Rest assured, these agreements uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation, while relying on the world’s best nuclear technology and scientists, designed right here in the United States,” US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said.
The energy department said the deal would advance both “US and regional security”, and would strengthen America’s “competitive edge in civil nuclear technology”.
Nuclear experts and former officials in Israel – the US’s top ally in the Middle East – have voiced concern that the plan could ultimately lead to Saudi Arabia being able to develop a nuclear weapon – though other experts say that path would likely take decades and spark pushback from the international community.
Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat said his country “can manage it” if Saudi Arabia had nuclear power for peaceful means.
Israel itself is widely believed to have nuclear weapons, but it neither confirms nor denies that this is the case.
Rosemary Kelanic, the director of the Middle East programme at the US-based Defense Priorities think tank, said it would be “quite shocking” if the US were to allow Saudi Arabia uranium enrichment facilities.
“The US has never done that before. We have never helped another country enrich on their own soil,” she said, adding that this was because “if you can produce your own nuclear fuel, you become a much bigger risk” for building nuclear weapons.
The agreement will now be sent to the US Congress for review.
Trump approves 30-year nuclear enrichment deal with Saudi Arabia ‘without safeguards’: Report
The new reports coincide with an illegal war on Iran, framed by the US as an effort to ‘prevent’ Tehran from acquiring nukes
News Desk, JUL 22, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/trump-approves-30-year-nuclear-enrichment-deal-with-saudi-arabia-without-safeguards-report
Washington is seeking congressional approval for a nuclear energy pact with Saudi Arabia that does not include safeguards aimed at preventing the development of an atomic bomb, two sources told Reuters on 22 July.
US President Donald Trump’s government is planning to submit “to Congress a pact with Saudi Arabia to share nuclear power technology that does not include safeguards the US has long said would stop materials being used in nuclear weapons programs,” the sources said.
“The administration would submit to Congress within days a document known as a 123 Agreement that will be signed by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman,” they added.
he White House and US Energy Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A source told CNN on 22 July that “the deal would last 30 years and could be announced as soon as Wednesday.”
CNN had reported the news first over the weekend, citing sources who discussed the matter on 18 July
The outlet cited documents and sources as saying that Trump has agreed to allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium without the need for international safeguards arrangements, like the ones that have been imposed on Iran for years.
That report said that the draft nuclear deal from last year is still awaiting Trump’s signature despite the conclusion of US–Saudi nuclear negotiations in October last year.
“The ongoing war with Iran … has played a role in delaying Trump’s signature … the Trump administration is delaying sign-off because it could face a bipartisan disapproval resolution blocking the deals from going into effect,” the sources stated.
CNN cited experts as saying that the deal “could potentially provide Saudi Arabia with a path to nuclear weapons.”
The US president and Israel have largely justified the current illegal war on Iran as an effort to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and operates under a religious fatwa outlawing the development of atomic bombs. US intelligence reports have also repeatedly concluded that Tehran is not seeking to weaponize its nuclear program.
Nonetheless, Tehran continues to refuse demands that it hand over its enriched uranium, which was raised to higher purity levels as a response to Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – an Obama-era US-Iran deal reached in 2015.
Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been saying for decades that Tehran was close to developing a nuclear weapon.
Several years ago, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) stated that if Iran acquires a nuclear bomb, “we will have to get one” as well.
The Theocratic Trap – How Divine Claims Become Engines of Destruction
20 July 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/the-theocratic-trap-how-divine-claims-become-engines-of-destruction/
I. The Definition: A Mask for Power
The word “theocracy” was coined by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the first century CE to describe the polity of ancient Israel – a form of government in which God himself is recognized as the head of state, and divine law is the statute book. Taken literally, theocracy means “rule by God” and refers primarily to an internal “rule of the heart.”
But what begins as a claim to divine guidance inevitably becomes something else. As Josephus himself understood, theocracy is a form of government in which “the laws of the commonwealth are the commandments of God, and they are promulgated and expounded by the accredited representatives of the invisible Deity, real or supposed—generally a priesthood.”
This is the fatal flaw. The claim to speak for God is the ultimate abdication of personal accountability. When human beings claim divine authority, they place themselves beyond criticism, beyond question, beyond moral restraint. The hierarchy that forms around such claims – the priesthood, the clergy, the self-appointed guardians of divine will – becomes an engine of control that inevitably turns toward violence.
II. The Pre-Westphalian Pattern: Religious Wars as the Norm
For more than a century before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europe was consumed by religious wars arising from the Protestant Reformations. The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which the Peace of Westphalia finally concluded, was the last great religious war in Western Europe – a conflict that had “broken out as a result of confessional conflicts between Catholic and Protestant states” and “inflamed vast regions at the heart of Europe.”
The lesson of that era is clear: when religion becomes the justification for war, there is no limit to the violence. The theocratic impulse – the claim that God is on your side and that your enemies are God’s enemies – creates a permission structure for atrocity. As one scholar notes, the pre-Westphalian era was “riven by murderous ideological divisions” that produced wars fought not for faith alone, but for dominance.
The Peace of Westphalia introduced the radical idea that peace was more important than religious unity. It was a turning point—but not an endpoint. The theocratic impulse did not disappear. It merely found new forms.
III. The Jewish Bund: Human Rights, Democracy, and Universalism
In 1897, the same year that Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, another Jewish movement was born in Tsarist Russia: the General Jewish Labour Bund.
The Bund was “a secular, socialist, defiantly Jewish, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist revolutionary party.” Its members were “young Jewish Marxists who wanted to overthrow the tsar and establish democratic socialism, but also to liberate their own people.”
The Bund’s political project was built on:
- Do’ikayt (“here-ness”) – the principle that Jews should build viable communities wherever they lived, rather than seeking an ethnostate in Palestine.
- Internationalism – the belief that Jewish liberation was inseparable from the liberation of all peoples.
- Universal human rights – the demand for “equal civil and political rights for the Jews in Russia” and for all oppressed peoples.
- Anti-Zionism – the rejection of the idea that Jewish identity required a state of its own. The Bundists “fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but ‘here where we live.’”
As Bundist leader Henryk Erlich presciently warned in 1938: “Zionism, in point of fact, has always been a Siamese twin of antisemitism… The Zionists regard themselves as second-class citizens in Poland. Their aim is to be first-class citizens in Palestine and to make the Arabs second-class citizens.”
The Bund was “deeply committed to universal humanist values and to socialist politics.” It rejected “all ethnonationalism, including Zionism” and believed that “Jewish national problems arising within the countries where Jews reside can be solved on the basis of freedom and democracy.”
This was the alternative to theocracy: not divine rule, but human rights. Not exclusivity, but solidarity. Not conquest, but coexistence.
IV. Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism: The Theocratic Turn
Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, represented a fundamentally different vision. He advocated a “revision” of practical Zionism in favour of “political Zionism” – the idea that Zionism was essentially a political movement, not a cultural or spiritual one.
Jabotinsky’s ideology was built on:
- Exclusivism – the belief that Jewish national identity must take precedence over all other considerations.
- State sovereignty – the conviction that only a Jewish state could solve the “Jewish problem.”
- Ethnonationalism – the elevation of Jewish national identity above universal human values.
By the late 1930s, Revisionist Zionism had become “a right-wing tendency” with branches that included the Irgun, which conducted campaigns of violence against British authorities in Palestine. After World War II, Revisionist ideology evolved into the political and religious movements that now dominate Israeli politics.
In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the “nation-state law,” which codified “Jewish supremacy” into law and “effectively mirror[ed] the Nazi-era legislation of ethnoreligious stratification of German citizenry.” As one analysis notes, the law stipulates that “actualisation of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people” – meaning that the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel are “without sovereignty or agency, forever living at the mercy of Israeli Jews.”
The theocratic impulse had found its modern expression: not a priesthood ruling in God’s name, but an ethnostate ruling in the name of a chosen people.
V. The Modern Manifestation: Gaza and the Theology of Extermination
The invocation of divine mandate has been central to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. In a speech on March 2, 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “In this week’s Torah portion, we read ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember and we act.”
This reference to Amalek – the Biblical nation that God commanded King Saul to “destroy all they have, and do not let them live. Kill both man and woman, child and baby” – has become “an oft-used phrase at the highest levels of Israel’s government, a dog whistle well understood to call for the extermination of the Palestinians.”
UN institutions, international and Israeli human rights NGOs, and scholars of genocide studies have “classified the wide use of the Amalek rhetoric across Israeli politics and the military as a clear incitement to genocide.” Netanyahu’s invocation of Amalek was “explicitly cited as direct incitement to genocide.”
In June 2026, a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.” The commission found that the “intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued, causing unprecedented death, injury and trauma to Palestinian children.”
The theocratic claim – the assertion of divine mandate – has become the justification for atrocity. As one report notes, “Wipe out the memory of Amalek” has become a rallying cry for those who seek the extermination of the Palestinian people.
VI. The Two Threads: Universalism vs. Exclusivism
The divergence between the Bund and Revisionist Zionism represents two fundamentally different visions of Jewish identity:
- The Bund (Universalism) Revisionist Zionism (Exclusivism)
- Human rights for all Rights for Jews only
- Democracy and socialism Ethnostate and supremacy
- Coexistence where you live Conquest of Palestine
- International solidarity National chauvinism
- Anti-Zionist Zionist
As Molly Crabapple’s recent history of the Bund documents, “Bundists themselves foresaw the inevitable inversion of victim and perpetrator demanded by Zionist ideology.” The Bund’s philosophy of do’ikayt – “here-ness” – offered a vision of Jewish life that did not require the dispossession of another people.
Today, those who place “human values, human rights and universalities above themselves” – the heirs of the Bund’s internationalist tradition – face threats not only from the Israeli far-right but also from figures like Donald Trump, who has embraced the same ethnonationalist rhetoric that fuels theocracy.
VII. The Pattern: How Theocracy Becomes Killing
The pattern is consistent across history:
- A claim to divine authority – human beings assert that they speak for God.
- The creation of hierarchy – a priesthood or ruling class that interprets divine will.
- The denial of accountability – those who claim divine authority place themselves beyond criticism.
- The dehumanization of the “other” – those who are not part of the chosen community are cast as enemies of God.
- The justification of violence – killing in the name of God becomes not only permissible, but sacred.
This pattern is visible in the pre-Westphalian religious wars of Europe, in the Nazi regime, and in the modern State of Israel. As one commentator notes, “the genocidal ideology the fans espouse” is rooted in “extremist religious nationalism, and the concentration of executive power.”
The claim to divine authority is always a mask for human power. The theocracy is always a hierarchy. And the hierarchy always protects itself – even at the cost of genocide.
VIII. Conclusion: The Choice Before Us
The theocratic impulse – the claim to speak for God – is the oldest and most persistent engine of human violence. It allows the powerful to place themselves beyond accountability. It allows the hierarchy to claim divine sanction for its crimes. It allows the killers to believe they are doing God’s work.
But there is another way.
The Bund offered it: a vision of Jewish identity rooted in universal human rights, democratic socialism, and international solidarity. A vision that rejected ethnonationalism and embraced do’ikayt – the commitment to build a just society wherever one lives.
That vision was nearly destroyed by the Holocaust and by Stalinism. But it survives – in the memory of those who fought for it, and in the example of those who continue to resist the theocratic impulse.
The choice is clear. We can continue to worship the theocracy – to bow before those who claim divine authority and commit atrocity in God’s name. Or we can choose the Bund’s path: human rights, democracy, and the recognition that no one speaks for God.
Theocracies are not built by the devout. They are built by the powerful, who use God’s name to mask their own ambitions. And they always, always lead to killing.
References
- Theocracy. Wikipedia.
- Theocracy. Catholic Encyclopedia.
- Peace of Westphalia. World History Encyclopedia.
- The Enduring Lessons of the Jewish Bund. The Nation, 10 April 2026.
- ‘For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’. The Guardian, 8 April 2026.
- Revisionist Zionism. Wikipedia.
- Israel Is Using Its Genocidal Gaza Playbook on Iran. The Nation, 6 March 2026.
- Israel’s ‘nation-state law’ parallels the Nazi Nuremberg Laws. Al Jazeera, 26 July 2018.
- UN commission: Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children. UN News, 23 June 2026.
- Blot Out the Memory of Amalek from Under Heaven. De Gruyter Brill, 2025.
- General Jewish Labour Bund. Wikipedia.
- Bundism. Wikipedia.
Nuclear deal that would permit uranium enrichment by Saudi Arabia in limbo awaiting Trump admin sign-off
18 July By Davis Winkie, Zachary Cohen, https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/18/politics/saudi-arabia-trump-nuclear-enrichment
The Trump administration has tentatively agreed to allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium without enacting international safeguards intended to prevent nuclear weapons development, according to sources familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by CNN.
The draft nuclear accord that outlines US support for Riyadh’s civilian nuclear program is awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature despite US-Saudi negotiations concluding in October 2025.
Two sources familiar with the matter indicated that the ongoing war with Iran — which according to Trump was launched in part to prevent Tehran from using its enriched uranium to build nuclear weapons — has played a role in delaying Trump’s signature. Some on Capitol Hill also believe the Trump administration is delaying sign-off because it could face a bipartisan disapproval resolution blocking the deals from going into effect, said one of the sources.
Experts told CNN the deal could potentially provide Saudi Arabia with a path to nuclear weapons unless stringent safeguards are put in place. The country’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has previously threatened to build his own nuclear weapons should Iran, his country’s principal regional rival, acquire the bomb.
Four sources said the agreement, which includes a civil nuclear cooperation deal known as a 123 agreement and a mandatory nuclear safeguards agreement, still have not been sent to Congress for review, as federal law requires the White House to do once signed.
The White House did not answer questions regarding the agreements and instead referred CNN to an October 2025 statement from Energy Secretary Chris Wright announcing the end of negotiations.
“We’ve come together on a deal for civil nuclear cooperation,” Wright said at the time. “Together, with bilateral safeguard agreements, we want to grow our partnership, bring American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia and keep a firm commitment to nonproliferation.”
The Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, DC did not respond to a request for comment.
Von der Leyen paints target signs on Europe with Ukraine drone pact
This is not sleepwalking into war. The European elites’ eyes are wide open and crazed.
The European Union has officially joined the war effort against Russia. This week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed a “historic pact” with Ukraine to integrate the production of combat drones to strike Russia.
According to Euronews reporting, the pact also envisages the joint production of ballistic missiles.
This scaled-up war effort will be funded by the €90 billion loan that the EU is releasing to Ukraine. A bill that will be paid for by generations of European taxpayers.
Von der Leyen was greeted in Kiev by Ukraine’s unelected martial-law president, Vladimir Zelensky. That makes two people who do not have a democratic mandate making decisions that are driving Europe to all-out war with Russia. Von der Leyen is a political appointee. She is not elected by popular ballot. Formerly, she was Germany’s Minister of Defense, and not a particularly bright one either. Dogged by corruption scandals and abuse of power over procuring Covid-19 vaccines from Big Pharma, von der Leyen is an exemplar of “failing upwards.”
On her 11th visit to Kiev since the conflict escalated in February 2022, von der Leyen declared that the “tide is turning” in the NATO proxy war against Russia. She was referring to the increase in long-range air strikes on Russian territory and the release of €90 bn to fund the war.
In a public speech, she brazenly announced that the European Union was explicitly allied with Ukraine as a participant in the war.
“In Europe, we already have huge technological and industrial capacity that can be deployed. And we have safe and secure production sites that can help to scale up,” von der Leyen said.
She added: “But we do not have that battle-tested knowledge and expertise that Ukraine has forged. So the point I am making is that we need to combine our strengths. Together, we can work on joint production.”
The innovation, which von der Leyen and her NATO planners presumably think is ever-so smart, is that European countries will produce munitions that are “safe” from Russian retaliatory strikes. The drones and missiles will be transported to Ukraine, from where they can be launched to hit deep into Russian territory to target the capital, Moscow, and take out oil industrial facilities all over the country. In recent months, NATO-backed Ukrainian drones have killed hundreds of Russian civilians. Von der Leyen’s pact with Ukraine is giving a green light to intensify this terror campaign.
But it’s von der Leyen’s arrogant sense of impunity that is astounding and should be viewed as deeply disturbing. She apparently assumes that European countries can serve as an arsenal of weapons for Ukraine to attack Russia. Yet, in her view, Russia is not permitted to take retaliatory action against the EU (and NATO) as a participant in the war. This is insanely reckless and stupid.
Of course, the European Union, NATO, and the United States have been participants in the proxy war against Russia since their coup in Kiev in 2014 to install and weaponize a NeoNazi regime. That background of weaponization and ideological programming culminated in war erupting in 2022. The Collective West has supplied an estimated $400 billion to prop up the regime since 2022, has supplied NATO mercenaries and advisors, as well as providing targeting logistics and operational expertise for long-range missiles.
Ukraine has also signed bilateral military pacts with individual EU countries, such as Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway. Britain has signed a One Hundred Year Defense Pact. All of these arrangements provide weapons, warplanes, drones, and missiles.
However, the EU support that von der Leyen unveiled this week is a commitment from the entire 27-nation EU bloc to join the war on an industrial scale.
In April this year, the Russian Ministry of Defense published a list of European companies and their locations that it said were partners in Ukraine’s war effort. Russia said that these sites could henceforth be considered legitimate targets for retaliation. So far, Russia has refrained from directly striking any EU or NATO state. But how long this Russian restraint will last is a pressing question in the light of increasing provocation by the EU and NATO.
Von der Leyen has taken to describing the Ukrainian regime as a “net provider of security for Europe.” This is to supposedly justify European citizens enduring economic hardship as public monies are funnelled to the corrupt regime.
This week, on cue for the drone deal and fusing of the EU and Ukrainian economies, Zelensky reshuffled his Cabinet for the second time in only a matter of months in an attempt to give the impression that he was cleaning up notorious corruption. Prime Minister Yulia Syrvydenko was sacked because she was close to Zelensky’s former Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak, who was forced to quit owing to a massive corruption scandal involving military procurement. In his latest clean-up act, Zelensky made the mistake of sacking Defense Minister Myhailo Federov, sparking public protests in Kiev and other cities. Federov, who had only been in the job for six months, was seen as an earnest reformer. His efforts riled military commanders, such as Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, who want the graft gravy train to continue running. No surprise that Zelensky backed the old guard to stay in place, especially as the €90 bn EU freight car is soon to arrive in Kiev.
Indeed, the tide is turning, but not in the way that delusional von der Leyen imagines. Russian forces on the ground are wearing down the last NATO-backed Ukrainian defenses while ramped-up Russian air strikes are destroying drone-making centers in Kiev and other cities.
That is why the EU and NATO are innovating a new tactic of removing drone production sites from Ukraine and seemingly out of Russia’s reach by stationing these sites in European nations. The implicit idea is that the EU can scale up the war effort safely without suffering any consequences.
The Russophobic EU leadership is driving Europe to war against Russia, as Professor Richard Sakwa commented this week in an interview with Glenn Diesen. The decisions are being made autocratically without any democratic mandate. Effectively, the EU has become a dictatorship for war. Another manifestation of this was seen at the Bastille Day parade in Paris on July 14, when NATO troops joined French and Ukrainian regiments in a unified show of belligerence towards Russia.
And brain-dead bureaucrats like Ursula von der Leyen on her €400,ooo a-year salary are happily painting target signs across European nations.
This is not sleepwalking into war. The European elites’ eyes are wide open and crazed.
Ceases to be a nuclear power’: The high-stakes deal the new UK PM inherits
SBS News, 21 July 2026 By Yasmine Alwakal
Andy Burnham has inherited a major AUKUS commitment with Australia. Whether Britain can deliver it is another question
IN BRIEF
- On Monday, former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham succeeded Keir Starmer as the United Kingdom’s prime minister.
- Experts say the change in leadership could impact the UK’s investment in defence but is unlikely to impact AUKUS.
Labour leader Andy Burnham has become the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade — but experts say it remains unclear how the former mayor of Greater Manchester will approach the country’s most important strategic partnership with Australia.
Newly departed UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer suffered a high-profile split with his defence secretary, John Healey, over a perceived failure to properly fund the department.
Burnham now inherits Starmer’s £298bn ($573b) defence spending commitment over the next four years, £4.7b ($9b) of which is unfunded and will need to make up part of Burnham’s first budget.
Experts have said that, while Burnham is unlikely to renegotiate the AUKUS agreement, defence is likely to play a central position in the new UK leader’s job description, given the growing threat of Russia to NATO members.
Jennifer Parker, a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, told SBS News that policymakers in Australia will be watching Burnham’s approach to foreign affairs closely.
“I think there are broader questions about the implications of Andy Burnham’s views on defence and the defence investment plan in the UK … [but] in many ways, AUKUS is critical for the UK,” Parker told SBS News.
The UK, alongside Australia and the United States, entered into trilateral AUKUS security agreement in 2021.
The deal is divided into two key pillars: Australia’s acquisition of conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability and the development and delivery of advanced capabilities such as underwater drones.
In July 2025, Australia also entered into a bilateral agreement with the UK dubbed the Geelong Treaty. The 50-year agreement enables the cooperative design, building, operation, sustainment, and disposal of nuclear-powered submarines known as SSN.
Will Burnham deliver on the UK’s AUKUS commitments?
Since 1968, the UK has been a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is recognised as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
Parker said since the end of the Cold War the UK has operated ballistic missile submarines called SSBNs:
“Now, you need to have SSN’s — attack submarines — to be able to protect your ballistic missile submarines. AUKUS, for the UK makes designing, building and operating SSN’s cheaper. So, it makes it easier.”
That’s why she believes the UK, whether led by current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer or the incoming Burnham, will continue to uphold its AUKUS commitments.
“If the UK can’t achieve AUKUS … the long-term impact is quite significant in terms of the UK ceases to be a nuclear weapons power. Which really changes its global status.”
According to the Australian government, the UK will deliver its first SSN’s by the late 2030s. Defence Minister Richard Marles said the first class of Australian-built submarines is intended to enter service by the early 2040s…………………………………………………………………..
Parker from the Lowy Institute also believes the Australian government will watch to see if the UK takes “strides” to address what she described as capability constraints facing UK submarine industrial bases………….
“As much as I’m confident they’ll make it [AUKUS] work, whether they’ll make it work within the stated time frames is genuinely an open question.”
The UK’s defence committee has launched an inquiry into its military resilience and preparedness. It follows a July report by its defence ministry, which found that 47 out of 49 major defence projects in the UK were delayed or over budget.
In a statement, Dan Jarvis, the newly appointed defence secretary, said:
“Many projects had been announced with insufficient or no funding at all. The consequences were profound: limited availability of warships and aircraft, an army facing a recruitment crisis, morale weakened and renewal of our nuclear deterrent delayed.” https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/andy-burnham-aukus-submarine-deal-australia/j38e9qzzf
The West Won’t Punish The Settlements. Its Two-State Solution Was Always a Sham.
Western elites cannot imagine a world without Israel as their military thug in the oil-rich Middle East any more than you can imagine life without your arm.
If Israel wants the settlements to continue expelling Palestinians off their lands until there are no Palestinians left on those lands, then the West is not going to naysay it.
July 15, 2026, Jonathan Cook Substack, https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-west-wont-punish-the-settlements
For decades, the EU has devised ever more convoluted ways to avoid penalising Israel’s illegal settlements, even as they devour a two-state solution it claims is the only path to regional peace
If I asked you to cut off your arm, would you do it?
What if I pointed out that that your arm regularly punched a neighbour in the face so violently that it broke their nose and teeth, and left them unconscious? Would you cut your arm off then?
I’m guessing the answer to both questions is a firm, “No.”
Which is exactly why the European Union, Britain and the United States have precisely no intention of severing their support for Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, however violent the Jewish colonisers who live on stolen Palestinian land prove to be.
For decades, settler militias – backed by Israeli soldiers – have beaten up Palestinians, shot them, poisoned their wells, chopped down their olive groves, torched their homes, all in an attempt to ethnically cleanse them from their historic homeland.
The relentless expansion of these illegal settlements has left any hope of a two-state solution in tatters. The West Bank is now an archipelago of Palestinian villages and towns isolated from one another by marauding violent settlers, apartheid roads only for Jews, steel and concrete barriers, and army checkpoints.
All of this has happened in full view of western states over many decades. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, ruled back in 2004 – nearly a quarter of a century ago – that these Jewish settlements violated international law and needed to be dismantled.
It reiterated that demand in a decision two years ago in which it identified Israel as an apartheid state ruling over Palestinians. It warned states to “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assists in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory”.
And yet the West has done nothing meaningful year after year as the settlements have stolen more land from Palestinians, made their lives there ever more miserable, and trashed any chance of the West’s supposed ambition of two states living alongside each other.
Remember this when Israel’s apologists tell you to wait for the same court’s definitive ruling – in a year or two, or maybe three – on what it deemed in early 2024 to be a “plausible” genocide in Gaza, just three months into Israel’s mass slaughter there.
Not only will any such ruling be far too late to make any difference to the victims of the genocide, but the US, Britain and Europe will do precisely no more to punish Israel for this crime of crimes – one we can see for ourselves without an ICJ ruling – than they have done in punishing Israel for the settlements.
Punching fist
Why? Because most western states no more wish to impose a penalty on Israel for its crimes than you would want to amputate a healthy arm.
If they refuse to lift a finger to stop a live-streamed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, why on earth would anyone imagine they are ready to do anything to stop Israel’s violent settlers ethnically cleansing the West Bank?
The settlements are as deeply integrated into Israel as your arm is attached to your shoulder. And in turn, Israel is as much the punching fist of the imperial West’s war machine as the City of London – and its former tax-haven colonies – are the beating heart of the imperial West’s financial machine.
Western elites cannot imagine a world without Israel as their military thug in the oil-rich Middle East any more than you can imagine life without your arm.
That explains why no one really believed that EU foreign ministers, meeting once again this week to discuss banning settlement products – the bare minimum they have long been obligated to do under international law – would reach an agreement.
More than 100 legal scholars had earlier written to the European Commission’s top trade and foreign policy officials stressing the EU’s “international legal obligation”.
But as everyone predicted, EU ministers kicked the can down the road – until at least October, when they agreed to more talks about talks.
The EU has been delaying meaningful action on dealing with the settlements since at least 2004, when the ICJ ruled them illegal.
A year after that ruling, the EU issued a Technical Agreement that removed preferential trade tariffs of the kind Israeli goods enjoy from any items produced in the illegal settlements. Israel agreed only because there were so many loopholes and workarounds it had no practical effect whatsoever.
It was another seven years – in 2012 – before the EU started to express concern about these loopholes, including the fact that Israel was routinely mislabelling settlement products as “Made in Israel”.
Fast forward another three years and the EU finally got around to pretending to be closing the loopholes. In November 2015, 11 years after the ICJ ruling, the EU issued an “interpretative notice” requiring labels on settlement goods to state: “Product from the West Bank (Israeli settlement).”
Again, Israel simply ignored the notice and continued mislabelling products, or blended them with products made in Israel, making it hard to determine the provenance.
Pure pantomime
Remember, these lengthy, meaningless battles were not about banning settlement products or even imposing punitive tariffs. They were simply about labelling them correctly.
To this day, the overwhelming majority of consumers across the EU have no idea, even if items are correctly labelled, which they almost never are, that they are buying products supporting Israel’s violent campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland.
It was because of this utter farce that civil society organisations started to noisily accuse the EU of complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and demand instead the outright banning of all settlement products.
These critics have now been banging their heads against a brick wall for over a decade. They have still achieved nothing, as this week’s EU meeting once again confirms.
Even were they to win a victory a year or two hence on banning settlement products, Israel would still be able to use the same workarounds it has been for the past 22 years to avoid any meaningful impact. European consumers would still be directly subsidising the violence of Jewish settler militias and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes.
All of this has been pure theatre – or more accurately, pantomime – to suggest that some kind of administrative process is in hand, that legal avenues are being pursued, that Israel will one day pay a price for its decades-old programme of ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
And yet nothing ever actually happens. The most the EU is prepared to do is throw a sop to its critics by imposing symbolic sanctions on a couple of dozen of the most violent settlers – out of a total settler population of nearly 700,000.
Those settlers did not end up in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by accident. Most were encouraged there by the Israeli state with offers of cheap housing, lower mortgage rates and higher funding of educational and other municipal services.
Note too that this abject failure relates to Israel’s explicit goal in expanding its settlements: to eviscerate the two-state solution the West says it craves as the only way to bring peace to the region.
The fact is Europe, Britain and the US have no interest in the two-state solution. If they did, they would have used the ICJ ruling in 2004 as grounds to ban settlement products, give that ban real teeth, and threaten Israel with a loss of all preferential trade with the West until it abided by international law and removed all obstacles to Palestinian statehood, including the settlements.
They did none of this because that was never their intention.
Their only concern is keeping Israel – their pit bull in the Middle East – fed and watered.
If Israel wants the settlements to continue expelling Palestinians off their lands until there are no Palestinians left on those lands, then the West is not going to naysay it.
Just as if Israel wants to continue deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza for death, as a United Nations inquiry recently determined, then the West will turn a blind eye to that too.
If Israel’s soldiers and Jewish settler militias want to take a US Congressperson hostage in the West Bank, as they briefly did to Democrat politician Ro Khanna last week, no western leader is going to make a fuss about it.
Israel may be a rogue state but it is a rogue state made entirely in the western elite’s image. The West’s only real concern is in ensuring its own publics don’t realise, as they watch a genocidal state disappear the Palestinians, that they are looking into the mirror.
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