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The Saudi nuclear farce and governance by whim and meme
Trump has made the word of the US government worthless.
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Last Wednesday, the United States announced it had reached an agreement to allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear use.
Less than 24 hours later, however, Trump repudiated the deal, insisting that Saudi Arabia would first have to normalize relations with Israel. By the end of the week, the administration was in chaos and the agreement was in limbo.
This is hardly the first time that the left hand in the Trump administration hasn’t known what the right hand — or even the left hand — was doing. Trump also last week unilaterally claimed he was reneging on a revenue deal with Canada involving the Gordie Howe bridge between Michigan and Ontario. And earlier this month, after ICE murdered multiple people, the administration said it was halting ICE traffic stops, only to almost immediately reverse the decision at Trump’s behest.
This erratic approach to decision-making is what you’d expect in a personalist dictatorship. Republicans love to tout the unitary executive theory, holding that the president has expansive and unchecked power. But they have implemented that theory under the reign of a man who is bored by policy, violently opposed to listening to anyone who isn’t fluffing him, and lives in a self-contained narcissistic fugue of grievance and ego-wounds.
The result is a regime that is constantly tripping over its own bloated mushroom-like appendages — and a global order in which absolutely no one can trust that the United States will do tomorrow what it promises today.
Betraying the Saudis
The United States and Saudi Arabia have been working on some sort of nuclear deal since 2008. A sticking point has been US objections to allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich its own uranium. President Biden also demanded that Saudi Arabia agree to join the (Trump-launched) Abraham Accords, which would normalize relationships with Israel.
But Saudi Arabia has refused to join the Abraham Accords without a path to Palestinian statehood. And when Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced the final deal last week, recognition of Israel was not in the agreement.
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The agreement was a major coup for Saudi Arabia, who received everything they wanted and had to give up little in return. The only thing the US gained, arguably, was boxing Russia and China out of a role in a potential Saudi nuclear program.
Unsurprisingly, many people objected to the agreement. Experts worried the deal would lead eventually to the Saudis developing nuclear weapons, and to a potential arms race in the Middle East.
Trump despises expertise, but he does listen to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent his entire career fighting to prevent Arab nations from counterbalancing Israel by developing their own nuclear weapons. And even more than Netanyahu, Trump listens to Fox News, where hosts Brian Kilmeade and Kayleigh McEnany questioned the deal, suggesting Trump had been weaker than (gasp!) Joe Biden.
Stung, Trump rushed to social media to say that the Saudis had to join the Abraham Accord