Nonproliferation Experts Warn U.S. Deal Could Lead to Nuclear-Armed Saudi Arabia

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is defending President Trump’s agreement to provide Saudi Arabia with a civilian nuclear program using U.S. technology. Rubio spoke on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in the Philippines. Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “I’ll let the agreement speak for itself. Suffice it to say that any agreement that we’re going to make with any country in the world on civil nuclear energy is going to be one that will have safeguards in place to ensure that it can’t be turned into a weapons program. And one of the best safeguards is to make sure that American technology and American companies are the ones that are involved in doing it.” The deal is likely worth tens of billions of dollars to U.S. nuclear energy companies like Westinghouse, whose reactors produce plutonium as a byproduct. Nonproliferation experts warn that waste could be reprocessed for use in nuclear warheads. James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote, “If true, this is tantamount to the United States’ giving up on nonproliferation.” www.democracynow.org