Trump approves landmark U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal | Richard Goldberg | CNBC

[00:00:00]President Trump has reportedly approved a 30-year agreement with Saudi Arabia to develop a civilian nuclear program. The deal is expected or estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. And we'll now head uh to Congress for review. Join us now uh Foundation for Defense of Democracy senior adviser Richard Goldberg. He served in the National Security Council in the first Trump administration.

[00:00:24]Congress, I I guess, can review it, but they can't stop it, I don't think. Could they?

[00:00:30]Unless they're they overrode uh one of the president's uh the presidential veto.

[00:00:36]>> Yeah, I think this will be hard for Congress to stop uh with the momentum that it has. I mean, in the end, the controversy that you're seeing is whether or not we will allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium on their own soil. The reason that's a controversy has actually been for many years we wanted to have a gold standard of zero enrichment. Uh and when we did a 123 agreement as it's called these US nuclear agreements with a foreign country with the UAE many years ago actually under the Obama administration uh we had them sign off and say they would forego enrichment uh forever. This is not going to include that gold standard. What it will do, however, is sort of punt on the issue. So you'll lock in the Saudis to be buying American, be working with us in nuclear technology and advanced nuclear uh energy for the next three decades. That means they're not buying Chinese, they're not buying Russian. They're hooked on the United States along with their uh strategic relationship. And it says that we'll have a committee together to explore whether or not they even need enrichment on their soil. And obviously, think about this, Joe, in this context. Right now, this administration's investing in a US fuel cycle, in a US uh fuel export industry.

[00:01:49]So, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that we would want to give that away commercially. We want to be like what the Russians have done for many years, sell the reactors and the fuel. And so, we'll see where this committee ends up.

[00:01:59]It may not forbid enrichment, but I'm not sure it's going to lead to enrichment on Saudi soil. And how much of this has to do with uh sort of a a response to Iran and to Iran's intentions that we know about the uh you know there there's two potential leaders in the middle or hegeimons in in the uh in the Middle East. Iran's always against Saudi Arabia. This just looks like us coming down on the Saudi side sort of as a uh in your face to to the Iranians.

[00:02:34]Well, the demand originally to include some sort of pathway to enrichment had started on the Saudi side. We were prepared to do this deal over many years. The Saudis then said, "Hey, if you're going to let Iran enrich uranium under that JCPOA," and of course the Biden administration was trying to go back to it. They said, "What's fair is fair. If the if the Iranians get international legitimacy for enrichment, why can't we as your ally have enrichment? This is crazy."

[00:02:59]And the Biden administration said no.

[00:03:01]and they started working through things and they said, "Well, maybe if you normalize with Israel and join the Abraham Accords and maybe if we do a a military deal." And so this really got very complicated now that the president, this president has destroyed for the next few years uh at least uh any semblance of an enrichment program in Iran. We've already taken that card off the table. So MBS doesn't really have that argument anymore. But he still is making it. He still wants a nuclear agreement. Why would we do this deal right now? Why didn't we do this 6 months ago? Why didn't we do this in 6 months? Maybe there is something else going on we don't see. Maybe it's tied to the Iran operations uh allowing uh Saudi airspace use which apparently was denied a few weeks ago. Maybe there will be some uh entrance of Saudi Arabia uh to the Abraham Accords in coming weeks or months. We don't see that yet. But uh if you just looked at the merits of the deal, I'd rather Saudi Arabia be partnering with the United States in nuclear energy and not China and not Russia. Rich, do you believe that uh all the c the Israeli intelligence, do you believe that all the centrifuges were moved um or many were moved into to pickaxe mountain um as as has been reported and do we need to do something about that at this point or you said we've already delayed it for a couple two three years and I think the president said it's the nuclear dust we're worried about we're not worried about um the centrifuges Well, I have been worried about Pickax Mountain for many years. I've publicly called for it to be hit several times.

[00:04:35]It wasn't hit last year during uh Midnight Hammer. It wasn't hit this year during Epic Fury. I thought it's really been a surprise that it's been overlooked. Now, this is very close to Natans, which was hit last year and destroyed the above ground facility there about a mile away. deep underground tunnels at least 300 feet down, maybe 450 under a mountain. And uh that already was supposed to be their breakout facility in the future that we suspect where they could do uh production of centrifuges, enrichment of uranium and weaponization work all in one hardened facility. Now we learn that they may have moved some of the centrifuges that they were able to keep or recover perhaps from Natans, maybe elsewhere into pickaxe mountain. That would be a concern simply because they're still working on the facility.

[00:05:23]They're trying to make it impenetrable to nuclear strikes. So you don't want to allow them a reconstitution path that will be even harder to delay or destroy in the future. If we're in operations right now, if we can find a military solution to degrade that facility, take the shot now.

[00:05:40]>> And that's that's the reason that uh maybe the president is considering it.

[00:05:45]When they asked us Pete Hegsth, uh, Secretary Hegsth about whether we had the capability to do it, he didn't really answer. Do you know if we have the cap? He said, "We got the greatest.

[00:05:56]If anyone does, we we can. And we have the greatest. And if anyone could, we could." But then he didn't say, "Yes, we could."

[00:06:04]>> Well, I would suspect we can at the very least degrade the facility and cut off access by hitting the entry and exit points. Now, that will only buy you some time and you'll monitor it. you would like to do what you did to Fordo. At least we have not been inside the facility. The IAEA has not been inside the facility unlike Fordo. Now, maybe the Israelis have the schematics through their intelligence sources and were able to design a plan. We can see open source from commercial satellite imagery where the ventilation shafts are, but we don't know exactly where they lead. Uh we also see cables that go in for power. So, these are vulnerability points that you could try to exploit again with those uh massive ordinance penetrators that we saw used against Fordo and continue hitting the same way we did Fordo and see what happens. Or you could hit the entry points to the tunnels, try to close them off for further activity there uh and continue to monitoring the sites. That would be a short-term band-aid. Uh, we'll see what the president decides to do or if there's other tricks up their sleeve.