Trump’s Saudi nuclear deal, Israeli elections get real

**Yonit Levi** (0:01)
An agreement between Washington and Riyadh that leaves Israel in the dark while tensions rise again between Washington and Tehran, and Israeli elections are off to the races with AI taking over the campaigns. It's Unholy, I'm Yonit Levi in Tel Aviv.

**Jonathan Freedland** (0:14)
And I'm Jonathan Freedland in London.
It's Unholy, Two Jews on the News, you know, you've just said, actually, obviously, busy week in those areas where we always focus on. But, and it's getting weird because I feel as if I've said this probably five times, a new prime minister in Britain, you know, incredibly five in four years. So Unholy has seen a lot of British prime ministers come and go, but a new one took office this week, Andy Burnham arriving into Downing Street. I feel that at least should be clocked somewhere, just because it's, you know, even if it is becoming a bit ordinary.

**Yonit Levi** (1:00)
I mean, it's strange because on our group chat, Michal, our producer wrote to you, could you elaborate on this strange concept of changing prime ministers? I'm not familiar with it.
Which is, you know, this is quite a thing that we're living in kind of two polar extremes, as you say, I think you have had what this is the seventh prime minister in a decade. Israel since 2009, apart from a short, a brief one year in which Bennett Lapid were prime ministers.
It was Netanyahu all through that period. So it's a very different world, perhaps. There's a golden mean somewhere to be found between these two extremes. But somehow, I was thinking this week between you and me, between what happened in politics in the UK and what's happening here in Israel. I was thinking of that quote of the King in Hamilton, right? Where he says, you know, they say George Washington's yielding his power and stepping away. I wasn't aware that was something a person could do. Yeah, completely.

**Jonathan Freedland** (1:58)
I had exactly the same thought. This is what it's like. And it's such a reverse of what you would think because Britain, you know, mother of parliaments and all this kind of thing, old established democracy, and you think Israel, volatile society, the Middle East, surely there'll be more changes of government in Israel than in dusty, fusty, old Britain. On the contrary, since Brexit, it's sort of Mediterranean style chaos here and a model of kind of glacial stability just in terms of changes at the top. And I know you mentioned the thing of 2009
I still do, you know, come back to 30 years ago, the Prime Minister of Israel. If you were doing that as a pub quiz question 30 years ago, when, you know, some of us were in our 20s, the answer would have been the same as the answer is now. You know, so that is to me the jaw-dropper. He's been this colossal figure all the time. Anyway, Andy Burnham, relative novice, he can learn something about longevity from the man ruling, governing where you are.

**Yonit Levi** (3:04)
Yes, you mentioned those elections of 1996 I think if I remember correctly, that was the first election I voted in in Israel. And just to mention that we have a really special project this week. And if you hadn't had time to listen to it, please do. We speak to three young first-time voters in these elections in Israel. Really just thoughtful and insightful young Israelis talking about their hopes and their visions and what they're considering as they're going to the ballot box for the first time in their lives. And before we move on to this week's news, we will just tell our listeners that the Unholy website is up and running.
unholypodcast.com, your one-stop destination for anything related to the podcast, every episode, on any platform, our YouTube channel, our premium subscriber model for exclusive bonus content, all in the same place. We'll say that again. It's unholypodcast.com.

**Jonathan Freedland** (4:03)
Absolutely, as you say. That's the place to go. Do indeed become a subscriber because there's bonus content there you are going to want to be part of. We're just cooking up a few new more offerings there.
So unholypodcast.com.
So breaking news as you and I convene here, because this is a moving story. Broke overnight, Wednesday into Thursday, news out of Washington that a nuclear deal had been done between the US and Saudi Arabia. It is billed very much as a civilian nuclear power project, so that Saudis can diversify their energy away from just fossil fuels and oil to having civil nuclear power, something they've wanted for a long time. But many concerns raised immediately about what was not in the deal. We'll come on to how this has changed in the hours since, but a few things there that immediately got people concerned. One is that it is reported, we haven't seen a text, that the Saudis under this deal would get the right to enrich uranium, which obviously is partly part of the civil process, but can become a step on the way to developing a nuclear weapon. Pointedly, this was kept out of the similar deal that was done for civil nuclear power with the United Arab Emirates back in 2009