Trump to Help Saudi Arabia Go Nuclear

Luke Vargas (0:00)

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Luke Vargas (0:33)

In a landmark agreement, President Trump okays a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. Plus, utilities pledge to limit increases in electricity bills caused by the data center buildout even if that's largely outside of their control.

And speaking of control, OpenAI admits that a pair of its models escaped the lab and hacked into another company.

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Luke Vargas (1:11)

It's Wednesday, July 22nd. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

The US will help Saudi Arabia go nuclear in a three-decade-long deal valued in the tens of billions of dollars. The Journal's Laurence Norman is here to discuss this Wall Street Journal exclusive story. Laurence, tell us about this landmark agreement that we report President Trump has now formally approved what's in the deal. What does this cover?

Laurence Norman (1:46)

My colleagues Michael Gordon and Stephen Kedin are reporting that essentially the US will help Saudi Arabia set up a civilian nuclear program. That will generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue for key US companies like Westinghouse.

The idea is that it will help the Saudis sell more oil and produce nuclear energy because of civilian domestic purposes and bind the two countries further together.

Luke Vargas (2:20)

Civilian, not military enrichment, a key distinction.

Laurence Norman (2:24)

Well, that is the key distinction and it's obviously the intention of the US to only make this a civilian program. The question is, how do you control that?

Once you give Saudi Arabia certain technologies, and once you allow them to do certain things, can you be sure that over time, they will not use it for military purposes? The critical element of this deal is that there is going to be a two year review that the US and Saudis do, looking at whether Saudi Arabia will be able to enrich uranium at home on its own. Once it can do that, it has a pathway, not only for civilian energy, but also for military use of enriched uranium. And so the US and the Saudis are going to have a lot of talking to do in the next two years, to figure out what the future will hold and how Saudi can be kept to its commitment that this is only a civilian program.

Luke Vargas (3:18)

Its commitments here only go so far, though. The country rejected the so-called gold standard commitment not to ever enrich uranium at home or reprocess the spent fuel from its reactors. And they also rejected what's known as the additional protocol and arrangement implemented by the International Atomic Energy Agency that would have provided more rigorous monitoring and inspections. I'm just curious what to make of all that, as early as President Trump's first term, the Saudi Crown Prince has been saying the kingdom would pursue nuclear weapons development if Iran was allowed to do so. And there's been a chorus of voices really across the political spectrum in the US warning that any sort of deal like the one we are seeing the president get behind now with Saudi Arabia could pose a wider proliferation risk in the region.

Laurence Norman (4:00)

You are bound to get serious concerns about what the Saudi intentions are, serious concerns about how this would impact on Iranian negotiations, and serious concerns that countries like Turkey and Egypt may take this idea and move ahead. There will also be concern that Saudi Arabia is saying it won't sign the additional protocol. That really is a critical commitment for countries because it allows inspectors to go not just to their nuclear facilities, but elsewhere, universities, labs, et cetera, where there could be in the future some kind of nuclear weapons work or studies.

So that may be something that raises red flags. In particular, in Congress, the administration says there will be some kind of agreement with the Saudis that will allow them some of that access, but we don't know the details of that yet.