Palestinians and Nuclear Weapons, The National Interest,
The unresolved Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the major factors preventing an effective region-wide prohibition of nuclear weapons.,by Paul R. Pillar , June 29, 2018
The Palestinians
“……… Consider the issue of nuclear weapons. Most of the states of the region have actively supported diplomacy aimed at making the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone. Israel, backed by the United States and now especially by the Trump administration, has opposed this diplomacy and looked for ways to impede it. These lines of contention were apparent this spring at a preparatory meeting for the next quinquennial review conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Israel argues that restrictions on nuclear weapons cannot be considered in isolation from other regional security issues. On the face of it, that is a valid argument, given the possible role of nuclear weapons as a deterrent against perceived non-nuclear threats. But Israel and its U.S. backer define the stumbling block in more Israel-specific terms. The Trump administration’s representative at the preparatory committee meeting spoke of many ostensible and mostly vaguely worded reasons to slow-roll diplomacy on a regional nuclear weapons-free zone, but the specific problem he singled out was “the non-recognition of Israel by some regional states.”
Any talk of recognition or non-recognition of Israel should immediately evoke the Arab League peace initiative , which has been on the table since 2002 and commits all the Arab states to recognition of, and peace with, the state of Israel contingent on a withdrawal from occupied territories and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem.
Subsequent modification of the initiative has made clear the Arabs’ acceptance of land swaps that would not require rigid adherence to boundaries that existed prior to the 1967 war. Saudi Arabia took the lead in constructing this peace proposal. The initiative is still on the table. Despite the dalliance with Israel of de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman and reports that he is willing to throw Palestinians under the bus as he pursues his own agenda, his government still subscribes to the terms of the initiative.
……… Full recognition requires the players in question to recognize the national rights of all other players and not to occupy someone else’s territory indefinitely. Also fair: amid much talk about recognizing Israel’s right to exist, it surely is just as reasonable to insist on recognition of the Palestinians’ right to exist. The conclusion: the unresolved Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the major factors preventing an effective region-wide prohibition of nuclear weapons.
That the Trump administration has gone all in with the Israeli government’s wishes while continuing to claim for itself the principal mediator’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute augurs very badly for any settlement of the conflict in the foreseeable future. The pessimism is only accentuated when taking into account the personal and financial interests of would-be U.S. mediators that make it understandable for Palestinian leaders to reject them as hopelessly biased. The kind of suffering that has played out in Gaza and along the Gaza fence is one reason to regret the dim prospects for peace on this issue. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/palestinians-and-nuclear-weapons-24752
Analysis: Israeli regime backs Saudi nuclear ambitions: Tactic or Strategy?, July 1, 2018 – (AhlulBayt News Agency) – On Tuesday, the Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said that Tel Aviv will support Saudi Arabia’s entry to the club of nuclear states if Riyadh signs the treaty preventing nuclear weapons proliferation, NPT.
Steinitz, addressing World Gas Conference in Washington, said that the Israeli regime supports the development of nuclear power in the Arab kingdom if it includes the gold standard protections and if the kingdom purchases uranium from the US.
The remarks on the Saudi nuclear ambitions on the one hand signal the sensitivity and significance of a nuclear Saudi Arabia in the Israeli security strategy and on the other hand carry hallmarks of an eased tone of Tel Aviv on Riyadh’s nuclear ambitions after the Arab monarchy showed a will to support Arab-Israeli diplomatic normalization efforts. Saudis are winning the Israeli positive stance as they are deeply engaged in an endeavor to pave the way for the “deal of the century” on al-Quds (Jerusalem) through putting strains on the Palestinians to bow.
The oil-rich Arab monarchy has designed ambitious plans to develop the nuclear energy as part of a futuristic roadmap. A royal decree issued in 2010 by then-King Abdullah led to setting up a nuclear power and renewable energies research center, dubbed (KA-Care), in the capital Riyadh. The facility was meant to suggest solutions to address energy and water needs of the country in the future. A year later, the center announced the kingdom aims to build 16 nuclear reactors to produce about 20 percent of its electricity by 2032.
The nuclear roadmap resulted in nuclear cooperation agreements with a series of nuclear technology holders, including France, Argentina, South Korea, and Kazakhstan. According to the deals, Saudi Arabia will see its nuclear industry fully operational and production-ready by 2040. In June 2017, Prince Mohammed bin Salman replaced Prince Mohammad bin Nayef as crown prince. The young crown prince very soon started his motion to get the US green light and technology allowing the Saudis to enrich the uranium on their soil. Media reports suggested that nuclear cycle acquisition was a top case in the prince’s negotiations with the American officials during his March visit to the US.
Despite the Saudi show of desire to become a nuclear state, some factors affect the nuclear technology acquisition possibility: The argument on the type of nuclear power use, Tel Aviv’s role-playing in this course, and the Israeli insistence on keeping its military superiority in the region through nuclear weapons monopoly.
Now a question presents itself: Is the Israeli compromise to the Saudi nuclear ambitions a fruit of Prince Mohammed-led pro-normalization policy, concession to the Israelis, and turning a blind eye to US embassy relocation to al-Quds at the price of the Palestinian cause?
…….. Another reason for Saudi Arabia to move towards developing nuclear arms is its military weakness and vulnerability caused by its geopolitical position. With its 2.15 million square kilometers of area size, Saudi Arabia is a big country. The capital is in the center, but the income sources and facilities, like oil facilities, are located on the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea coasts, hence being an easy target for military action from air and sea. The failure to win a war waged against Yemen in 2015 after three years has exhibited the Saudi military weakness.
In early May, as the world held its breath in anticipation of the nuclear disarmament discussions between US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and struggled to digest Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, an international meeting on the subject was winding up in Geneva. Over several days, representatives of dozens of states discussed preparations for the fifth review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) scheduled to take place in 2020.
As always, the Egyptian representative attacked Israel for refusing to sign the treaty. The Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Raza Najafi, took the opportunity to take a dig at the United States for its nuclear cooperation with the “Zionist regime.” The Iranian news agency reported that Najafi stressed his country’s full commitment to the treaty.
Also as always, Israel observed the scene from the sidelines, just as it did last July when 122 states signed a treaty banning a series of nuclear weapons-related activity such as attempts to develop, test, produce, spread and stockpile such weapons. Obviously, the world’s nine nuclear states did not append their signatures to the document. Israel, which is not a member of this club, was also absent from the list of signatories. Iran signed.
For over five decades, Israel has been playing both sides. Despite numerous and persistent indications that not all of its nuclear reactors are designed for peaceful use, Israel does not admit to having a bomb. In fact, for years, it has maintained a policy of ambiguity, neither denying nor admitting possession of a nuclear bomb. Last week, The New Yorker reported that shortly after assuming office, Trump agreed to a request by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign a letter promising not to press Israel to give up its nuclear weapons. According to the report, three previous residents of the White House had signed similar commitments.
The presidential commitment has a caveat. According to The New Yorker, there is an unwritten understanding on Israel maintaining its longstanding nuclear policy. In other words, Israel cannot admit to having nuclear weapons. This ambiguity enables the United States to provide Israel with a diplomatic umbrella and to repel pressure on it to join the NPT. It also requires Israel to keep IAEA inspectors away from its reactors. As a result, Israelis know nothing about thecondition of the aging nuclear reactorin the southern town of Dimona and the extent of its compliance with international safety standards.
In order to maintain its policy, Israel’s military censors prohibit Israeli journalists from referring directly to Israel’s nuclear capability. They are obliged to hide behind the absurd phrasing “according to foreign sources” when referring to the matter. Over time, the policy of ambiguity has turned into a policy of deception. In 1976, former defense minister and then-Knesset member Moshe Dayan admitted in an interview with a French TV station that Israel had the capacity to manufacture a nuclear bomb. If the Arabs introduce a nuclear bomb into the Middle East at some point in the future, argued Dayan, it is incumbent on Israel to have a bomb first — but not in order to use it first, of course. In 1996, Prime Minister Shimon Peres said in an interview with the Israeli Maariv newspaper, “Give me peace and I will give up the nuclear [program].”
Talking to journalists in 1998, Peres boasted that Israel “built a nuclear option, not in order to have Hiroshima, but an Oslo,” a reference to the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement known as the Oslo Accord. In 2006, incoming US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the former CIA director under President H. W. George Bush, told a Senate confirmation hearing that Iran was “surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons — Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf.”
That is how Israel managed both to create nuclear deterrence and to prevent inspection of all its nuclear facilities.
Explaining its support for Israel’s nuclear ambiguity in position papers it presented at the recent Geneva conference, the United States said countries in the region were trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction in violation of their NPT commitments. In order to clarify that it was not pointing at Israel, the United States argued that these states refuse “to recognize and engage Israel as a sovereign state … [and] instead pursue divisive actions to isolate Israel.” More so; since a dig at Trump’s predecessor is always de rigeur, the position papers claim that international discussions on the matter between 2010 and 2015 (during the Barack Obama administration) illustrated the limitations of focusing on nuclear weapons without addressing the underlying political and security issues in the region.
Indeed, the vision of a denuclearized Middle East cannot be realized without addressing the region’s political and security issues. However, these issues cannot be addressed without dealing with the prolonged Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and breathing life into the long dormant 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which foresees Arab states normalizing ties with Israel in return for its withdrawal from the occupied territories. To avoid background noise that could disrupt the on-again, off-again Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic negotiations over the years, the American partners in what is known as the Middle East Quartet (which also includes Russia, the UN and the European Union) have been ignoring Israel’s refusal to join the NPT. The US withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran as well as the relocation of its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, its boycott of UNESCO and its recently launched trade war are all weakening the Trump administration’s leverage in the international diplomatic arena. The bear hug between Israel and Trump might prove the beginning of the end of Israel’s nuclear ambiguity policy and the opening shot of a wild nuclear weapons race in the Middle East.
Middle East Monitor 29th June 2018 The chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Khaled Toukan,
announced today that his country has abandoned the idea of establishing a
nuclear power plant, which was planned to be built with Russian technology
with a capacity of 2,000 megawatt. Dr. Toukan told a news conference that
the commission has abandoned the construction of a large plant and will
consider building small reactors. The chairman added that small reactors
need less funding and are more likely to be sponsored internationally than
large stations. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180629-jordan-gives-up-idea-of-large-nuclear-power-plant/
Israel vehemently opposes any effort by the Saudi Arabia to relax “gold standard” non-proliferation limits on enriching uranium or reprocessing nuclear fuel in any deal between the two countries, Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s energy minister, told Reuters in an interview.
“Once you allow one country to enrich uranium or reprocess fuel, it will be extremely difficult to tell other countries in this vicinity or elsewhere in the world not to do so,” he said.
Steinitz, in Washington for the World Gas Conference, met this week with people in the Trump administration about Saudi Arabia’s quest to build at least two nuclear power stations with the help of U.S. technology. He did not identify who he met with.
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has been working with Saudi Arabia on a civilian nuclear agreement that could allow the kingdom to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium, practices that non-proliferation advocates worry could one day be covertly altered to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons.
The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the status of the nuclear power talks with Saudi Arabia.
Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have diplomatic relations, but they share concern about Iranian influence in the Middle East.
If the United States allows Saudi to relax the standards, “then you deteriorate the non-proliferation effort, so I am confident the Americans would listen to our concern,” Steinitz said.
Steinitz said it would support Saudi Arabia’s development of nuclear power only if it included the gold standard protections and if the kingdom purchases uranium from the United States.
Saudi Arabia has said if it does not get U.S. assistance to build reactors it could turn to other international partners. The kingdom is also in talks with companies from Russia, China, South Korea and other countries on nuclear power., Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by James Dalgleish
Israel Boosting Defense of Nuclear Reactors Fearing Iranian Missile Attack Despite precautionary measures against a targeted attack, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission believes a missile strike could be a propaganda achievement for enemy, but wouldn’t endanger Israelis, Haaretz, 28 June 18, Chaim Levinson
Washington: US secretary of state Mike Pompeo on Saturday warned Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons, saying it would face the “wrath of the entire world” if it did so, but added that he hoped it would never be necessary for the United States to take military action against the country.
In an interview with political columnist Hugh Hewitt conducted on Friday and broadcast the following day on MSNBC, Pompeo said that whatever the fate of the international nuclear deal with Iran, it would not be in Tehran’s interest to seek nuclear arms.
“I hope they understand that if they begin to ramp up their nuclear program, the wrath of the entire world will fall upon them,” he said.
“Wholly separate from if they spin a couple of extra centrifuges, if they began to move to a weapons program, this is something the entire world would find unacceptable and we’d end up down a path that I don’t think is in the best interests of Iran,” Pompeo said
“When I say wrath, don’t confuse that with military action. When I say wrath, I mean the moral opprobrium and economic power that fell upon them. That’s what I’m speaking to. I’m not talking to military action. I truly hope that that’s never the case. It’s not in anyone’s best interests for that.”
Pressed on whether the United States would do whatever it had to do to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Pompeo said: “President Trump has been unambiguous in his statements that say Iran will not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon.”
Press TV, Jun 23, 2018 A senior Iranian nuclear negotiator says the Islamic Republic expects the European Union to put forward by the end of June its package of proposals to save a multilateral nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries from which the US has withdrawn.
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Saturday that the three European signatories of the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the EU had promised to offer a package of practical steps that would fulfill Iran’s demands, including on oil sales, payments for its oil and transportation………
Since the US president pulled Washington out of the historic nuclear deal, European countries have been scrambling to ensure that Iran gets enough economic benefits to persuade it to stay in the deal. The remaining parties have vowed to stay in the accord.http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/06/23/565876/Araqchi-Europe-JCPOA-package
Dreadful’ future awaits world if nuclear deal collapses: Iran’s Salehi, http://www.presstv.com/DetailFr/2018/06/22/565761/Salehi-Oslo-Forum-JCPOA-US Iran’s nuclear chief says the Middle East and the entire world will face a “dreadful” future if a 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement Tehran signed with the P5+1 group of countries falls apart.
Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi made the remarks on Friday in an address to an expert panel held on the sidelines of the Oslo Forum in the presence of Norwegian and Omani foreign ministers.
He said the international community showed a severe reaction to the United States’ “unwise and baseless” decisions, including its move to withdraw from the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“If the European Union and other countries supporting the JCPOA do not demonstrate their practical opposition to the US policies in due time, they will face a dreadful future and unprecedented insecurity in the region and the world because of the JCPOA’s collapse,” AEOI chief said.
US President Donald Trump announced on May 8 that Washington was walking away from the nuclear agreement, which was reached between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – plus Germany.
Trump also said he would reinstate US nuclear sanctions on Iran and impose “the highest level” of economic bans on the Islamic Republic.
Under the JCPOA, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed against Tehran.
Since the US president pulled Washington out of the historic nuclear deal, European countries have been scrambling to ensure that Iran gets enough economic benefits to persuade it to stay in the deal. The remaining parties have vowed to stay in the accord.
In a phone call with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, on June 12, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the Islamic Republic will quit the multilateral nuclear agreement if it does not benefit from the deal after the US pullout.
“If Iran cannot enjoy the agreement’s benefits, it will be practically impossible to stay in it,” Rouhani said.
Elsewhere in his address, Salehi stressed the importance of holding dialogue among key regional players and once again reaffirmed the Islamic Republic’s readiness to help solve crises based on diplomatic approaches.
The Norwegian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Oslo supports efforts by the European Union to safeguard the Iran nuclear deal, amid the bloc’s promises that it will protect it following the US withdrawal from it.
Oslo backs efforts by the EU to maintain the JCPOA, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry said after a meeting between Salehi and the Norwegian foreign minister, Ine Eriksen Søreide, in Oslo.
21 June 18, TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has announced a list of 15 demands for improving relations with the United States, including a U.S. return to the 2015 nuclear accord, in response to a similar list of demands made by Washington last month.
In an article in a state-owned newspaper Thursday, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on the U.S. to stop providing arms to the “invaders of Yemen,” referring to Saudi Arabia, and to drop its opposition to the nuclear disarmament of Israel.
The article came in response to demands laid out in May by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called for a wholesale change in Iran’s military and regional policies, threatening the “strongest sanctions in history” if it refused. The U.S. withdrew from the landmark nuclear agreement with world powers earlier that month.
Today, Almost 50 Years After The Original Richard Nixon-Golda Meir Understandings, Israel’s Nuclear Capability – Declared Or Not – Is A Solid Fact Recognized By All
To Understand The Ritual Of Presidential Letters, We Must Go Back To The Starting Point. In 1991, Aluf Benn Was The Reporter Who Revealed In Haaretz The Existence Of These Nuclear Understandings Going Back Years, Between Richard Nixon And Golda Meir.
In September 1969, When Meir Made Her First Visit To The U.S. As Prime Minister, She Reached An Array Of Understandings With Nixon That Removed Any Dispute Over The Nuclear Issue From The Agenda Between The Two Countries. The Understandings Concluded A Decade Of Cat-And-Mouse Between Them On This Issue.
Per The Understandings, The United States Accepts Israel’s Unique Nuclear Status, Will Not Press It To Join The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact And Will Defend It In International Forums. For Its Part, Israel Will Continue To Refer To Its Nuclear Capability As If Hidden; It Will Continue To Assert That It Will Not Be The First In The Region To Introduce A Nuclear Weapon.
The Nixon-Meir Understandings Were A Practical Arrangement That Solved Concrete Problems Weighing On Relations Between The Countries At The Time. The U.S. Already Knew That Israel Had Crossed Or Was Crossing The Nuclear Threshold, It Knew That Its Own Policy Of Trying To Stop This Had Failed, And It Recognized That It Had To Adjust Its Attitude Given The New Reality.
The U.S. Needed The Understandings So It Could Deliver Phantom Jets To Israel, And The Delivery Began That Same Month, After Negotiations The Year Before Over The Sale Had Involved A Harsh Confrontation Over The Nuclear Issue. Also, It Was Necessary To End The Yearly Visits By American Nuclear Inspectors To Dimona; By 1969, The Americans Realized They Couldn’t Reverse The New Nuclear Reality And That The Only Way To Minimize The Damage Was To Keep It Hidden.
Today, Almost 50 Years After The Original Understandings, Israel’s Nuclear Capability – Declared Or Not – Is A Solid Fact Recognized By All. Paradoxically, The Leaders Of This Nuclear Power Still Feel That They Need A Presidential Piece Of Paper To Confirm This.
Entous’ Revelations Illustrate Yet Again How Outdated The Nuclear Ambiguity Policy Is, Including The Israeli Ploy Whereby It’s Permissible For Anything To Be Written About Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal As Long As It’s Attributed To “Foreign Sources.” The Time Has Come For The Israeli Nuclear Issue To Be Handled Differently, Both At Home And Abroad. The Time Has Come For Post-Ambiguity.
The Writer Is A Professor Of Nonproliferation And Terrorism Studies At The Middlebury Institute Of International Studies.
TEHRAN – Referring to recent statistics released by a Stockholm-based research institute, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said all proven nuclear warheads stationed in the Middle East are entirely owned by the Zionist regime of Israel.
In a message in his Twitter account, Zarif denounced the Israeli regime for “howling incessantly” about Iran’s activities, while the regime itself owns all the 80 nuclear warheads in the Middle East.
“There are at least 80 nuclear warheads stationed in the Middle East. None are in Iran; rather, they’re at the fingertips of a warmonger who howls incessantly about fabricated Iranian ‘ambitions’,” Zarif said.
Donald Trump becomes fourth U.S. president to sign letter saying U.S. will not pressure Israel to forfeit its rumored nuclear capabilities, New Yorker reports • Obama aides failed to brief Trump officials on letter during transition, report says.
Israel Hayom StaffIsrael has managed to secure a written pledge from four successive U.S. presidents to safeguard its presumed nuclear deterrent, The New Yorker magazine reported on Monday.
According to uncorroborated reports in the foreign media, Israel has as many as 200 nuclear warheads as part of a presumed military nuclear program dating back to the 1960s. Israel has never publicly acknowledged these reports.
Israel has also pledged not to be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons in the region.
According to Monday’s report, in the wake of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, Israel felt that the unwritten understanding struck between President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Golda Meir in the early 1970s to ensure Israel would never be compelled to denuclearize was insufficient.
Eventually, Israeli policymakers convinced President Bill Clinton to put the Nixon-Meir understandings into writing.
“The first iteration of the secret letter was drafted during the Clinton administration as part of an agreement for Israel’s participation in the 1998 Wye River negotiations with the Palestinians,” said the report, by The New Yorker’s Adam Entous.
“In the letter, according to former officials, President Bill Clinton assured the Jewish state that no future American arms-control initiative would detract from Israel’s deterrent capabilities, an oblique but clear reference to its [alleged] nuclear arsenal.”
The letter was later signed by President George W. Bush. But when President Barack Obama won office in 2008, Israel was concerned he would hold off on renewing the pledge.
“With Obama, we were all crazy,” an Israeli official was quoted in the report. A former U.S. official is quoted as saying that Obama’s advisers believed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “paranoid” that the U.S. would try to take away Israel’s presumed nuclear weapons, but that “wasn’t our intent.”
Ultimately, Obama signed “an updated version of the letter.”
According to the report, efforts to renew the pledge when President Donald Trump assumed office initially stalled, when Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer made the request in a surprise move in February 2017. When he came to the White House, the Trump officials said they needed more time, but the Israelis “wanted to limit who could take part in discussions of the letter, citing the need for secrecy.”
According to the report, part of the tensions then arose because the White House was not aware of the letters.
“The very existence of the letters had been a closely held secret. Only a select group of senior American officials, in three previous administrations, knew of the letters,” the report said.
When Trump became president, his aides “didn’t find any copies of the previous letters left behind by their predecessors. The documents had been sent to the archives.”
US Promised Saudis to ‘Kill Iran Nuclear Deal’ – AnalystSputnik News, 14 June18 Saudi Arabia made its defense cooperation with the US conditional on Washington exiting the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the founder of the Ibero-Persia consultancy firm has said.
“The large-scale US arms supplies to Saudi Arabia in May 2017 made it perfectly clear that the sanctions against Iran were coming back and the nuclear deal was dead,” Sharoj Habibi claimed in an interview with Sputnik Mundo.
According to Habibi, the contract for the delivery of delivery of $350 billion worth of US-made THAAD air defense missile systems to Riyadh was negotiated, among others, by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
“Obviously, if you let your son-in-law clinch such a deal, this big-time operation is bound to offer very lucrative bonuses,” Habibi noted adding that the Trump family could have earned a very comfortable, though undisclosed, commission from the deal.
He alleged that as part of the contract, the US authorities “promised to do everything possible to kill the nuclear agreement with Tehran, which made it possible for Iran to economically outpace Saudi Arabia and develop its gas producing sector. Iranian gas would effectively sideline America’s Middle Eastern ally, Saudi Arabia,” the expert said.
He added that because Riyadh’s ultimate goal is to ”control everything that is happening in the Middle East,” it needs to bring the US into play. With Donald Trump’s arrival inat the White House, he continued, the Saudis jumped on the occasion.
“Therefore, instead of calling Trump crazy or dumb, I would say that he is an unscrupulous or ruthless businessman,” Habibi noted.
During his May 2016 official visit to Saudi Arabia, President Trump signed off on a historic arms delivery deal with Riyadh to the tune of up to $350 billion.
Washington sees the agreement as a means of boosting the Gulf kingdom’s defense capabilities and supporting its efforts to counter terrorist groups operating in the region
…….Iran has been in full compliance with the terms of agreement as verified in 11 inspection reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).On June 8, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States was walking out of the nuclear agreement with Tehran, a decision that has been strongly criticized by other signatories to the deal, including the EU, Russia and China.https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201806141065411103-saudi-us-arms-deal/
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