While President Donald Trump has not officially signed a civil nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, the announcement by a State Department official that one is in the works got pushback in Congress.
Thomas Dinanno, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told both the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees that he negotiated five 123 agreements in line with Trump’s executive order to have 20 signed by 2028, or the end of his term.
A 123 agreement, otherwise called the “gold standard” nuclear agreement, is a legal framework named after section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act. It calls for peaceful nuclear cooperation between the U.S. and another country, requiring a commitment to nuclear nonproliferation between both parties in order for the United States to export nuclear material, according to the State Department.
When Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked Dinanno Tuesday if Saudi Arabia was one of the five 123 agreements he was referring to, Dinanno said, “I believe so,” but that it hadn’t been signed by Trump yet so was unofficial.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), however, said at the House hearing that regardless of whether the administration “trust[s]” Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS), the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, can the administration be certain Saudi Arabia “will not be governed by hostile forces a year or two later?”
When Dinanno responded that this was “sort of a hypothetical,” Sherman retorted that not only was it not a hypothetical, but “you have to decide whether to give a green light to MBS to develop a nuclear weapon.”
Murphy also said Saudi Arabia had reservations about some of the normal protocols, including inspection of all nuclear sites and nuclear sites the U.S. is not involved in, no reprocessing and no enrichment. “Do you think that any of those three might be included in the agreement with Saudi Arabia?” Murphy asked.
While Dinanno said he could not go through the details, “I think we will have a solid” non-proliferation approach that is “compliant with the Atomic Energy Act.”
Murphy said he wanted to “express [his] concerns” that “all the public reports are that none of those three things will be covered by the agreement with Saudi Arabia.”