At the G-20 meeting in India last week, President Biden publicly shook Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman’s (MBS’s) hand and met with him privately. It’s unclear what the two talked about. The good news is that there was no further mention of any U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with the Kingdom.

As I make clear a recent Jerusalem Post op-ed, “Helping Saudi Arabia Go Nuclear Won’t Stop Iran from Doing It Too,” lending civilian nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia is a prescription for nuclear weapons proliferation, not only in Saudi Arabia, but in the Middle East region and beyond. 

As is well known, MBS is keen on matching Iran’s bomb option with a bomb option of his own. That’s why he has demanded that Washington collaborate with the Kingdom on developing nuclear power and permitting it to enrich uranium, a process that can bring states within weeks of acquiring nuclear arms. This is MBS’s demand for recognizing Israel. Those that want to bribe MBS should find something else to focus on.

What if MBS gets his nuclear assistance from China?  This would be bad but having Washington give it would be worse. Consider if Washington caved in to this request the UAE, who Washington forced to forswear enriching uranium, is on record wanting to reopen this matter if Washington offers any of UAE’s neighbors an opportunity to enrich. After that, count on Turkey (a NATO ally), South Korea (a mutual security treaty ally), and possibly Egypt (the next largest recipient of US aid after Israel) wanting similar treatment. Each might also follow MBS’s example of making threats to secure our consent.

As for counting on our intelligence agencies or the International Atomic Energy Agency reliably detecting  military diversions in a timely fashion from a Saudi enrichment or reprocessing plant, good luck. The track record of both watch dogs in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere is hardly encouraging

Even helping the Saudis build power reactors without green lighting enrichment or the reprocessing of plutonium would be a mistake. Why? Nuclear power programs are bomb starter kits. Iran, in fact, used its “peaceful” power reactor program as a conduit for acquiring all it needed to supply its covert nuclear weapons-sensitive activities. This is something the CIA belatedly verified in a highly classified report (after it was too late to throttle Iran’s program). NPEC published an unclassified version of that analysis. The point surely is not lost on any of Iran’s neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. 

Of course, we still must do what we can to roll back Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts. But having the United States help MBS with a “peaceful” nuclear program would hardly help. Just the reverse.