Are Trump’s New Conditions for a Saudi Nuclear Deal Tied to Israel’s Rejoining the Iran War?

Could President Trump’s change of heart over a nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia be tied to Washington’s widely expected escalation in Iran — and the possibility of re-recruiting Israel for the war?“I am considering a massive attack, bigger than ever before,” Mr. Trump told Axios Thursday. “I am close to making a decision,” he said, adding that Israel “would join in two minutes if I ask them to,” although “we don’t need anybody.”Earlier on Thursday the president turned on its head a civilian nuclear cooperation deal signed on Wednesday between the Department of Energy and Riyadh. The original deal seemed to open a pathway for Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium on its soil. It was not linked to establishing formal ties with Israel.As details of the deal emerged, fears were raised across Washington and beyond over the prospect of Mideast-wide nuclear proliferation. Israel, specifically, was horrified by the prospect of an Arab country with which it has no formal relations eventually acquiring an atomic bomb.“There will be no enrichment of material!” Mr. Trump wrote on TruthSocial Thursday morning. The deal, he added, “is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”Was the president’s change of heart influenced by Israel or its allies on Capitol Hill? “Not to my knowledge,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday. While a text of the original agreement has not been made public, it reportedly contained no linkage to establishing ties with Israel. It also promised an examination of eventually allowing the Saudis to enrich uranium domestically.Riyadh was far from amused. A deal “was signed, so nothing to renegotiate,” an unidentified Saudi source told reporter Laura Rozen. “Tweets don’t overturn signed agreements.”Meanwhile America increasingly telegraphs its intention to escalate the assault on Iran. “I saw [Abbas]Araghchi, their foreign minister, who the other day said something about their policy is an eye for an eye. The President’s policy is a head for an eye,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at Manila on Thursday. “I mean, they will pay a very heavy price for the things they’re doing.”This week several press outlets reported that Iran has moved centrifuges and enriched uranium to a deeply dug nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain. “We’ll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon. There’s not a thing they can do about it,” Mr. Trump said following the leaked reports.The facility is dug into granite terrain, though, and more deeply underground than the Fordow site that was struck by American B-2 bombers last year. “I’m not sure you could actually destroy it,” a non-proliferation researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Andrea Stricker, tells The New York Sun.Yet Ms. Stricker adds, America could “drop massive ordnance penetrators if they chose to try, perhaps exploiting the ventilation shafts.” And Israel may then “come into play in a ground raid, boots on the ground, to try to go down into the facility and destroy whatever assets might be in there.” Israel has been untouched by the regional turmoil since war resumed in the last couple of weeks. As a national election gets into full gear, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is sensitive to the anxieties of voters whose summer plans, after three years of turmoil, could be interrupted by renewed Iranian missile attacks. “Israel has no interest in joining the campaign,” a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s inner Cabinet, Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich, said last week. “The current situation is the best for us.”An Israeli military source tells the Sun that Israel has no reason to join the war unless America changes the campaign’s targeting, to include Iranian infrastructure and nuclear facilities. Israel would strongly respond if Iran attacks it directly, or if Mr. Trump asks for its cooperation. Regardless, several Israeli mayors announced this week that they would unlock public bomb shelters in their cities. “We all know that we’re approaching a strike on Iran, perhaps even this weekend,” a Likud Knesset member, Moshe Saada, told Channel 14 television Wednesday. His statement, though, was widely panned by unidentified government officials. Jerusalem security officials are reportedly closely coordinating strategy with the United States Central Command’s chief, Admiral Brad Cooper. American refueling planes are being flown into Israel in growing numbers, indicating a major escalation in the war is afoot. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, sat on the sideline during the entire war. Conditioning a nuclear deal to ending Riyadh’s fence sitting is a sensible move.

Are Trump’s New Conditions for a Saudi Nuclear Deal Tied to Israel’s Rejoining the Iran War?

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