Experts are warning that President Joe Biden’s latest plan for the Middle East could spark a nuclear arms race in the region among Islamic nations.
The details were contained in a New York Times report about the administration’s attempts to revive a deal that would normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which collapsed after Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack.
The administration wants Israel to reward the Palestinian people for the unprecedented terrorist attack from Hamas, a terrorist group that they elected to run Gaza, by agreeing to give them their own official state.
Saudi Arabia has informed the Biden administration that it wants a U.S.-Saudi mutual defense pact, which would counter the threat it faces from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it wants “cooperation on a civilian nuclear program with uranium enrichment in the kingdom, the sale of advanced American-made weapons and, potentially, a trade deal.”
Israel is opposed to the deal because its government and people overwhelmingly oppose giving Palestinians their own state as experts warn that it will turn into a haven for Islamic terrorists.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, also known as MBS, has indicated that a nuclear program for the country is his most important priority and that if Iran develops nuclear weapons then his country will, too.
Andrea Stricker, Deputy Director & Research Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Nonproliferation & Biodefense Program, said that the deal “guarantees a regional nuclear arms race.”
“The Biden administration is playing with fire if they open a door to or assist the Saudis with uranium enrichment,” she told The Daily Wire in a statement. “This would upend decades of American policy to prevent the spread of the means to make nuclear weapons.”
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“Congress must immediately pass a law making bilateral nuclear cooperation contingent on Riyadh ruling out enrichment and plutonium reprocessing and signing an enhanced IAEA inspection agreement, the Additional Protocol,” she added. “Otherwise, Biden and Sullivan will have left not Middle East peace as a legacy, but a new trigger for nuclear arms-racing.”
Rebeccah Heinrichs, senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the director of its Keystone Defense Initiative, slammed the Biden administration’s “mismanagement” of America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, calling it “one of the biggest fumbles of the Biden’s foreign policy.”
“The U.S. and [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] KSA have shared interests in countering Iran’s goal of Middle East hegemony and destroying Iranian terrorist proxies,” she said. “But KSA will inch closer to a nuclear weapon to the extent the U.S. permits Iran’s power to grow while restricting Gulf partners and allies in their effort to counter it. It’s in the interest of the U.S. to uphold nonproliferation goals but in its focus on resurrecting the Iran nuclear deal, team Biden may be courting disaster by initiating the groundwork for a Saudi one.”