By Tom Fowdy
As reported by the BBC, the United States and Saudi Arabia "signed a landmark deal that will allow the Gulf kingdom to develop a civilian nuclear programme." The deal, described as "a peaceful nuclear co-operation agreement," will provide "great access for American companies in the Saudi nuclear energy program," alongside the caveat that China and Russia are kept out. The deal comes at a critical moment amidst an ongoing war between the US and Iran, Saudi Arabia's rival in the region, wherein peace efforts have largely failed.
The US has been attempting to negotiate a deal with Saudi Arabia for years, albeit one with a much larger geopolitical scope than this one. Through successive administrations, Washington has sought to try and lock the kingdom into a higher-tier alliance and sought greater strategic alignment, but of course there has been one sticking point which has repeatedly saw it unravel, the demand for the Kingdom, containing the holy cities of Islam, to recognise the State of Israel, a move which comes at a huge political risk. Thus, this element has got it nowhere.
However, Trump's war in Iran and the catastrophic oil crisis it has created have forced the hand of the House of Saud, who have long sought to be less reliant on crude, and thus the two countries have reached an understanding on nuclear power for now. Still, this is not an insignificant development, for it strikes at the heart of Washington's ambition to forcibly remake the Middle East, dominate its security order and thus place its own power projection at the centre, containing Iran as the adversarial state which underpins its own legitimacy. Saudi Arabia will become a nuclear state, and even in civilian terms, that has massive consequences.
The United States has always sought to dominate the Middle East region by positioning itself as the primary security provider, of which itself is premised on maintaining regional division and thus always having a "bogeyman" to force countries into paying for American arms and protection. Since the turn of the millennium, such useful villains have included Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the rise of terrorism in the form of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, the Assad regime in Syria, and by 2017: Iran.
The Trump administration deliberately sought to undermine Barack Obama's attempts at diplomacy with Tehran by scrapping the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or "Obama deal" and return to a state of confrontation, arguing that Iran itself, arguing that Tehran itself sought to remake the regional order through its use of militant proxy organisations in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, which the US was ultimately distracted from confronting due to the war on terror. Iran itself had also significantly strengthened its capabilities in the form of its drone and ballistic missile programs.
While increasing tensions with Iran, the first Trump administration has also utilised a two-pronged approach to diplomacy to isolate Tehran which has involved 1) pushing Arab countries to unilaterally recognise Israel via the Abraham Accords and then 2) ensuring that Arab countries themselves do not normalise or improve relations with Iran. In each case, the fundamental strategic objective revolves around consolidating the US-led order in the region as permanent and to prevent a regionwide peace which would render its security presence obsolete. Hence, when China brokered a normalisation deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia some years back, Washington's response to that would be to initiate further conflict to drive those countries apart, and likewise, of course, offer benefits to the Arab States to stop them becoming cozier with Iran: The product? The war in Iran itself and ultimately a civilian nuclear agreement. The US thus becomes a stronger guarantor of Saudi Arabia's energy needs, while also offering it security amidst the very war with Iran it started. This subsequently allows Washington to shape regional dynamics and lock rival powers out.
But this does not mean all is well: A nuclear Saudi Arabia is a cause of significant scepticism and concern even amongst the US foreign policy community itself, and poses the risks of a nuclear race in the Middle East as it does not incentivise Iran to denuclearise, but to do the opposite, and given that peace talks and proposed deals with Tehran have gotten absolutely nowhere due to the massive gulf in strategic interests between both sides, what do you do if you're Iran? You are already living with the US and Israel bombing you constantly and seeking to bring down your regime, so why would you agree never to nuclearize, even for so-called peaceful purposes, when the US is then giving that to one your biggest regional rivals Saudi Arabia?
Ultimately though, anyone who is even remotely switched on ought to realise that the United States has never truly had an interest in maintaining peace in the Middle East, ever, it has always been about stoking division, conflict and war that it might be able to dominate the region, offering privileges for those who are roped into its dependency and go along with it.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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