The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Nuclear

Jeffrey Lewis 0:05

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:22

And I am Aaron Stein, the director of the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Jeffrey 0:26

Although I'm not in Monterey right now, Aaron.

Aaron 0:28

No, you're not. We are recording this much earlier than normal because you are on my side of the world.

Jeffrey 0:34

I made the trek all the way up to Hanover, New Hampshire, where I'm going to do a dramatic reading tonight of part of the 2020 commission.

Aaron 0:45

How do you even get to Hanover, New Hampshire from Monterey, California?

Jeffrey 0:49

Well, so you need to take an airplane to Phoenix, and then another airplane to Boston, and then you need to take a bus three and a half hours to Hanover. So I got up at four in the morning, made my 5.50 a.m. flight out of Monterey, and got here at 9 p.m. local time. So that was a f*** of a day, Aaron.

Aaron 1:13

Yeah, I know, and I think... You had to go find food at 10 p.m. at night. I think you found a bar, if my tracking of you on Twitter is correct.

Jeffrey 1:22

Yeah, as it turns out, the local denizens of Hanover, New Hampshire, they like alcohol. So it was not hard to find booze and food even at that very late hour. The good citizens of Hanover are night owls.

Aaron 1:37

Do you know where it's difficult to find booze? Where you're going next? No, actually, that's fine. It's easy to find. For listeners, I'm going to Iraq next week. No, that's okay. Neighbors of Iraq. It's a little difficult to find booze.

Jeffrey 1:55

That was a segue, Aaron.

Aaron 1:57

I was leading us to our podcast discussion this week.

Jeffrey 2:02

Are you suggesting the sort of place where if we were to imbibe, we might find ourselves hacked up with a bone saw and dissolved in acid?

Aaron 2:11

I won't go that far, but certainly you'd be in a whole bunch of trouble. It's been known to happen. Certainly you'd be in a whole bunch of trouble.

Jeffrey 2:19

Sometimes things get out of hand, you know? Mistakes are made and bodies are dissolved. That's right. That's right. We don't we don't want to cast dispersions or anything. It's just, you know, happens. Sometimes you walk into a consulate to get a wedding license and there's a struggle.

Aaron 2:38

And someone saws you into little pieces. Just this is what routine governments do. But of course, we're talking about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who I think this is their second appearance on the podcast within a month because the nuclear is back.

Jeffrey 2:52

Yeah, although, in fairness, this is one where we will be defending, mildly, the kingdom. Yeah. Because people are losing their minds.

Aaron 3:01

Losing their minds, and, you know, in true Arms Control wonk fashion, there is some wonky stuff to talk about about wonky stuff.

Jeffrey 3:09

Yeah, so there have been two stories that we're going to talk about in turn. One reported by the Daily Beast, which is that the Trump administration approved some 810s, which will tell you what an 810 is if you don't know, but some 810s involving nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia. And then another from Bloomberg showing that Saudi Arabia has begun construction of a very, very small research reactor.

And people's heads are exploding.

Aaron 3:47

Yeah, and I think it's because, A, just general ignorance of the topic going around. B, suspicion of sort of what we talked about previously on this, which is the Trump administration's efforts to sell reactor technology to the Saudis. And three is just general disdain for the Saudis. So all three are coming together into these stories.

Jeffrey 4:09

Yeah, and they mix into that toxic stew of conspiracy theories contained in a sack of human flesh known as Tulsi Gabbard, who tweeted, Mind-blowing and inexplicable is Trump's recent approval for U.S. companies to sell nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Why it's in our interest to help the world's primary exporter of jihadist ideology and terrorism get nuclear weapons.

Is a question we should demand Trump answer. Now, by the way, if we were selling nuclear weapons to Bashar al-Assad, she'd probably be fine with it.

Aaron 4:45

Yeah, and, you know, she'd probably take them on credit. You know, at least for the Saudis, we'd demand cash. But... Yeah, so the answer is it's not that bad, and we should talk about why. Right, and I was thinking about the best way to structure it. I think we should talk about first is about the nature of the story.

They're linked. It's what an 810 is and what it is that they're building out there, their first quote-unquote reactor.

Jeffrey 5:11

Right, and I mean, I should be clear, because the story which was reported by the Daily Beast is pretty good. And we want to give Erin Banco, the journalist, credit for the story. And I want to make it clear that I'm less aggravated about her story than I am people's reaction, which, as you say, drives from the fact that people don't know what an 810 is.

Right. And we should probably, having promised to tell our listeners four times what an 810 is, we should probably tell them now. Do you want me to do that?

Aaron 5:44

Yeah, just go ahead and tell them because then we'll dive into the reactor after that.

Jeffrey 5:48

Okay, so for listeners, the Atomic Energy Act, which governs peaceful nuclear cooperation between the United States and other countries, has a variety of sections that are relevant to technology transfers. The one everybody knows about is Section 123, which is where we get the name 123 Agreement, which is like a proper... Has to go before Congress agreement that allows the United States to transfer technology.

There is another section of the Atomic Energy Act called Section 810, right, 810. And that governs what I think is best imagined as like consulting work. So if you're a company and you're going to go do some consulting on a country that's building a nuclear power plant, but you're not actually going to export any equipment or materials, but that you may transfer proprietary information or even some export-controlled information...

In cases where you're doing that, you need an 810 approval, and that doesn't have to go before Congress. And those are actually pretty routine.

Aaron 7:10

There's a lot of consulting associated with it, with the construction of even a small research reactor, I think is important to put out there too. So it's not abnormal that U.S. companies would act as a subsidiary or a subcontractor to other people to go over there and play some role in this.

Jeffrey 7:26

By the way, I misspoke. As I'm thinking about it, I actually don't think it's Section 810 of the Atomic Energy Act. I think it's a different section. Let me look it up. It's Section 57. Part 810 refers to the Code of Federal Regulations. Do you want to redo all that? No. I think we can just let the mask slip to listeners that I don't have a photographic recall of the Atomic Energy Act.

Aaron 7:53

It's pretty long, so we'll let you slide on that. But I mean, I think the point stands is that basically this is for U.S. firms that would be consulting on this project. And as part of this, they need to comply with any things that would trigger export controls or proprietary information. They need this thing to then go across to Saudi Arabia.

That's right.

Jeffrey 8:14

And so it's the U.S. persons are engaged directly or indirectly in the production of special nuclear material outside the United States. When somebody like Tulsi Gabbard says it's technology transfer, she's really conflating two different things, you know, and generally speaking... 810s are not a big deal. In light of the IP3 thing, which we made fun of, that consortium of former generals trying to get rich, they probably would have gotten rich off 810s doing consulting, and nothing ever would have gotten built.

No bombs would have been harmed in the making of that wealth.

Aaron 9:05

Yeah, and I think now is the time to flip over to the Bloomberg story because they are the ones that looked at the reactor being built inside the reactor. They used satellite photography to say that the building had been constructed. They could have just looked online. There's a lot of technical documents about it. And that sort of completes the picture is that they are secretly building this reactor.

I think we should talk about that and its legacy and what it may mean.

Jeffrey 9:37

Yeah. So we we know that. Argentina, their nuclear energy entity, INVAP, is building a low-power research reactor in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis put out a press release. And they weren't hiding it. No one's hiding it. And there is a lovely paper that somebody from the Nuclear Projects Division at INVAP, R.O. Matzi, gave called Low Power Research Reactor to Impel Creation of a National Infrastructure, which is all about the...

Sale of this teeny tiny itsy bitsy little research reactor to Saudi Arabia. It's, it's a hundred kilowatts. We'll talk about how big that is in a second, but it's really a training tool, you know, and it's not, it's so small, you know, a hundred kilowatts. It's smaller than most university research reactors

Aaron 10:47

Right.

Jeffrey 10:50

And, you know, if you use the old one gram of plutonium per megawatt thermal day. Explain to listeners what that is. That's how you estimate approximately how much plutonium a nuclear reactor can produce. And why do we care about that?

Aaron 11:10

Because that gives you a sense of if it... Because you put the plutonium in a bomb.

Jeffrey 11:14

Right. And so you're going to want anywhere between... For a country like Saudi Arabia, you know, anywhere between... Four and eight kilograms of plutonium for a bomb. Four on the fancy side, eight on the not so fancy side. And so the way that you estimate that is, and like you can do a much fancier estimate, but it's not going to be that much more accurate.

I mean, you have to know so much about the reactor to get a really accurate number. But it's one gram of plutonium, not a kilogram, one gram, right? So one one-thousandth of a kilogram Per megawatt thermal day, so if this thing is 100 kilowatts thermal, right, how much heat it generates, you're going to get one gram per megawatt day. But unfortunately, it's only 100 kilowatts, so, and you figure operates 23, 230 days a year because they don't operate all year long by the end of the year you would have 23 grams of plutonium, which is not enough to do anything.

Aaron 12:23

Yes, and one would assume, or perhaps infer, that as part of this, there are people that would be involved in this project, hence why you need the 810s.

Jeffrey 12:36

Yes, I mean, I presume they could do it all with... It could be this project, it could be other projects, you could do it all with foreign personnel, but yeah, I'm sure U.S. companies want to get involved in consulting both. I would say this, the purpose of this reactor... Is to train Saudi personnel so that they can make good decisions about what they want to build next.

Right. Right. And so, I mean, the way they say it is, this is the way Motsi says it, even when large facilities are on the radar of a newcomer, starting with the construction of one small research reactor is largely beneficial in order to have a wider and more solid knowledge base before launching the major project. And then he adds, right, with an eye on these problems, INVAP developed a low-power research reactor aimed at filling a gap the first of a kind is already designed and ready for construction in Riyadh.

Right. So, you know... And this paper is in an IAEA publication.

Aaron 13:34

Right. It's not formatted very well. Sorry, IAEA. You guys could have needed a little help there. But, like, it's... He goes right through the reasons and rationale within this paper. And it's really... You found it. So it's actually a very interesting reading about... The rationale and reasons for why the Saudis may want this and why IMVAP is happy to give it.

Jeffrey 13:53

So my guess is the A-10s are probably for a mixture of projects because the low-power research reactor is a first step for a larger Saudi nuclear effort. And so that's kind of what we should then focus on, right? It's not this 100-kilowatt reactor, which, you know, the Saudis announced, and its location's not a secret. And, I mean, it's good that, you know, it's good that it was Jonathan Tyrone at Bloomberg, right, who wrote up the story.

Right. It's good to find it, but it's not a surprise. And I think that the bigger issue here is not this reactor. It's the concerns outlined in Jonathan's story, which is, you know, has Saudi Arabia put in place the safeguards that we would expect? Before they build Bigger reactors, right? So they have what's called a small quantities protocol, which is like a, it's like a very simplified safeguards agreement, basically for countries that don't have any nuclear material.

Aaron 15:09

Or very, very little, as the thing says. Right.

Jeffrey 15:11

Small quantities. Right, yeah, that's right. As the name would suggest, you're right. I'm trying to dumb it down, and they've already dumbed it down plenty.

Aaron 15:20

They've made it very clear what it is. No, basically it's just you have such, either you have none or very small, so you're... Inspection or your nuclear accountancy demands of the agency are not very high.

Jeffrey 15:31

So you can sign a different agreement. Right. And so the issue is they don't have one of those yet. And the Argentines, it's actually Rafael Grossi, who I know. It's very embarrassing. He's a lovely man. You know, he has said they're not going to export the fuel to Saudi Arabia until there is a full scope comprehensive safeguards agreement with subsidiary arrangements.

Aaron 15:54

Which is different than the small quantities protocol.

Jeffrey 15:56

Right, so that would be a proper step up. So I think everybody wants and expects Saudi Arabia to sign a proper comprehensive safeguards agreement, but they have not done that yet.

Aaron 16:13

So I have a rather banal interpretation for this, but we can get into that later. To me, this suggests program dysfunction rather than some sort of nefarious intent.

Jeffrey 16:24

Right. By the way, there's a clarification. I guess technically they have a comprehensive safeguards agreement in place. It's just that the small quantities protocol modifies that is probably the more proper way to say that. And what they don't have are the subsidiary arrangements. Yeah, and again, I just think this is – I hate talking about this topic because it is so hard to talk about correctly.

Aaron 16:45

It is. I mean, to be honest, I haven't looked – this is taking me back to when it was still the Monterey Institute of International Studies and coursework I haven't looked at in a long time. But my point is – Right.

Jeffrey 16:56

It's you have a CSA, but then it gets modified by the small quantities protocol, which basically relieves a lot of the – So you get a CSA. God, you know what? We should do this for readers, or for listeners, rather. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Aaron, to keep doing this. But you sign a comprehensive safeguards agreement, right? But if you have minimal or no nuclear material, it suspends the application of many of the provisions of the comprehensive safeguards agreement, which is why we tend to say they don't have a CSA.

They... They do have a CSA, but it's suspended because they have a small quantities protocol. And what you have to do is you have to then replace the small quantities protocol with subsidiary arrangements, which are actually the fine-grained details that make the comprehensive safeguards agreement a practical document. Right. Does that make any sense? No, that makes perfect sense.

I mean, for people who are in it. Right. So, well, but I wonder for listeners. So the point is Saudi Arabia, they technically have a CSA, but it's largely suspended because they have the small quantities protocol. Right. They are going to have to move away from the suspension under the small quantities protocol to a full comprehensive safeguards agreement with proper subsidiary arrangements so that they really do have safeguards.

And the Argentines have said they will not give them the fuel until they do this. And then Yuki Amano, right, the IAEA. The IAEA chief said, this is actually, I have the quote. He says, they didn't say no, they didn't say yes, and they are now giving it thought. This is where we stand now. So we're kind of at this point.

I think the big takeaway from the reactor construction is not, oh my God, they're building a reactor. It's that even though it is tiny, this is the point at which Saudi Arabia needs to go from having its safeguards being very minimal to having a proper arrangement in place, because what's likely to come next will be of concern.

Aaron 19:07

Right. And my point was that could either signal like hedging or what I personally think, you know, is that it's a lot to do all at once and their bureaucracy is catching up.

Jeffrey 19:22

Yeah, and they probably need some Americans to get some 810s to come and consult with them on what a safeguards agreement should look like.

Aaron 19:30

Exactly. This is a technical thing, and so somebody has to come over there and assist them. Hence why you need an 810. Hence why – I'm not exactly sure that the absence – I'm joking.

Jeffrey 19:40

We don't know what the 810s were for. No, we don't. But it could be one thing. The lack of capacity is a problem across the board for them for sure. Correct, and – Which is why you build a 100-kilowatt reactor, right?

Aaron 19:52

Right, right. Yeah. I mean that's what I'm trying to say is that like you can take it negative. You can go to the sort of Tulsi Gabbard, whack-a-doodle, I love Bashar al-Assad, like spectrum of this. Or if you've dealt with this like in the more sort of practical sense, you can flip to the other side of the spectrum and be like, well, they're still figuring it out.

There's probably not an ingrained nuclear expertise in their bureaucracy. And maybe one of the reasons they didn't give the answer to Amano right away is because the people who were talking to him weren't empowered to do that, and they weren't exactly sure what was going on.

Jeffrey 20:23

Yeah, I mean, for listeners, the fact that we just had to explain like 810s and we just explained low-power research reactors, you probably now know more than the responsible Saudi officials. They're just diplomats.

Aaron 20:34

Do you know what I mean? Because they're just diplomats.

Jeffrey 20:36

Yeah, absolutely.

Aaron 20:37

Sorry, that wasn't it. That's not a diss. It's just like this is a technical subject. But that's my point, right? Okay, that's the point.

Jeffrey 20:45

Well, so I mean I think that ultimately is sort of the big takeaway is – None of these things, either the 810 or the Low Power Research Reactor, are reasons to get freaked out. You know, they're really not big deals. But we are now at a point where Saudi Arabia needs a proper CSA with subsidiary arrangements.

Aaron 21:13

Right. And so while we aren't that concerned about this... Maybe the point is now to talk about when we would get concerned. And we've talked about this on previous podcasts. It's like, you know, what is our trigger to not go full Tulsi, but to be like, hmm, what the hell's going on around here? And I think one of the other things is worth then broadening out is like, you know, this, the Saudi-U.S. nuclear dialogue around the 123, you know, Leaving aside the 810s, you know, could have some pretty profound implications for proliferation standards or non-proliferation standards in the region more broadly, you know, beyond just a small little 100-kilowatt reactor.

Jeffrey 22:03

Right. So, I don't know what your... I mean, my concern lines... First of all, I am very concerned about the thing we found, right, which is the solid propellant missile plant Yeah, that's a that's a thing that gets my attention. Not necessarily because missiles have to be about nuclear weapons, which is a thing people used to think.

And I don't think that anymore. But that's still a pretty big jump up in scale and scope for the Saudis. Right. And so just in terms of I think the quote that I gave the Washington Post at the time is we might be underestimating their ambitions. Yes. So that got my attention. So I'm concerned about that. Obviously a larger research reactor or a full-sized power reactor would get my attention.

So I think, you know, if there was a research reactor that was sort of optimized to produce plutonium that was in the kind of few tens of megawatt range, you know, like a Young-Bjorn-sized thing, that would get my attention. ... And then there's the big question of enrichment and reprocessing, right? If Saudi Arabia seeks either of those two capabilities, then I'm probably going to be in a little bit of a fit.

And by the way, one reason that we now need a comprehensive safeguards agreement with proper subsidiary arrangements and an additional protocol, I think, is precisely because You need to be worried not merely about the facilities you know about, but the ability to look for facilities that you haven't been told about.

Aaron 23:57

Right, and that would come under the additional protocol.

Jeffrey 24:00

Which, for listeners... Additional protocol would help a lot, yeah. For listeners, that's the protocol to the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement that was created in the wake of South Africa and Iraq, where the IAEA discovered their job is to make sure that a declaration is complete and correct. And the IAEA is really good at making sure declarations are correct.

It is a challenge to make sure that the declaration is complete and the additional protocol, as well as some modifications to the subsidiary arrangements that are not part of the additional protocol. Code, what is it? Code 3.1 from Iran? Am I remembering that right? It is 3.1. Yeah.

Aaron 24:48

Oh, my God. James Acton still has the piece I always read on modified code 3.1. Yes, yes.

Jeffrey 24:54

It's very important. The additional protocol as well as appropriate modifications to the subsidiary arrangements make it easier for the IAEA to look for covert facilities.

Aaron 25:10

Yes. Before we pivot, I mean, one of the things that I also find important just for me is, like, Within the 1.2.3, not necessarily – like there's a difference between actually building enrichment and reprocessing or pursuing that technology versus we don't want to preclude our – as we define it, right to this technology. We won't intend to build it, but we don't want to etch it out.

I always – like I think that's important because put out because of – Everything we hear about the so-called gold standard, and it's not a gold standard. It's not a standard if only one country goes for it, right? That's an outlier country, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey 25:55

Well, and even those countries where we have gotten pledges for enrichment and reprocessing, so that, you know, I'm thinking of the UAE and Vietnam. Right, which are different cases. Those pledges, they're different cases, they're different pledges, and they both fall short of a renunciation. The UAE one was stronger. But it, it was a renunciation provided that no one in the middle East got a better one, two, three agreement.

Aaron 26:21

It's a hell of an eight tens for those UAE negotiations, but yeah.

Jeffrey 26:26

So, but I mean, if, if Saudi Arabia gets a one, two, three agreement or, or Jordan does that, that doesn't have the the, the same UAE pledge, then the UAE is free to, to modify it. In Vietnam, it was a sort of political pledge to try to use the market, you know, as sort of, you know, best intention is to use the market, not to develop these capabilities.

But again, no renunciation. And I think that's right. I mean, I tend to be pretty... I'm not a person who believes in compromise for compromise sake. You know, I think you should hold out for the right kind of answer. Like I strongly oppose giving advanced consent to South Korea to reprocess U.S. obligated spent fuel. So like and like there's no compromise there.

But if one is being realistic, renunciations are harder to get than Than, than, than pledges to do one's best, right? and so just, if we're being realistic I don't think, I, I don't think we're gonna get Saudi Arabia to renounce and frankly, they don't need a one-two-three agreement. I mean, that's the other piece we have to discuss, which is I mean, Saudi Arabia needs a 1-2-3 agreement if it wants to buy U.S. reactors or reactors that have U.S. technology in them.

But they don't have to do that.

Aaron 27:59

No, we talked about this on the IP3. I mean, there's a political point to this, to where you're saying, to where you're essentially getting American consent, or at least American political approval, better way to put it. That you're building reactors is okay, rather than you absolutely need it to build reactors.

Jeffrey 28:20

And in fact, there is a case, which I'm probably not supposed to talk about, so of course I will. I guess I won't name the country. This is full frontal pod today, so we're good. Yeah, no, I'll be a little bit discreet. But I mean... I think there was a very small country that was building a reactor of, I think, Russian design.

I actually don't remember, so this is not just me being cautious. This is me not exactly remembering. But it basically wasn't a U.S. design. And so there was no need for a 1-2-3. And they wanted to hire a U.S. firm to do some consulting. Maybe it was an architectural firm. And that required an 8-10. And so the country approached the U.S. and was like, we'd like a 1-2-3 agreement.

And the Department of Energy tells them, like, you don't need a 1-2-3 agreement. You can do this with an 8-10. And by the way, we'd be very happy to give you the 8-10 because... You know, it makes no difference to us. You're building this reactor one way or the other, and we're just delighted that an American firm is getting the work.

And the country was like, no, no, no, you don't understand. We want a 1-2-3 agreement. And it was sort of explained to the country like, okay, a 1-2-3 agreement needs to go before Congress. That's an enormous amount of work. And again, you only need an A-10 to be able to do this. And what they were looking for was the U.S. seal of approval that it was okay for them from an American perspective to have nuclear power.

So they wanted to negotiate a 1-2-3 agreement and And then continue purchasing from their foreign supplier, which did not need a one, two, three agreement. Right.

Aaron 29:50

Yeah. So now, I mean, so do we talk about Iran here? I mean, does this like then pivot into sort of like the Iran debate and like where the nonproliferation sort of standard is going in the Middle East? Because I feel like it has to be mentioned, you know, because it's so separate from the JCPOA and a lot of the things that you hear about the You know, the boogeyman that the Obama administration signed an agreement, legitimized Iranian enrichment program, therefore everybody wants an enrichment program, and so we're undoing things.

It's just not even a good comparison. Should we go down that hole? I mean, rabbit hole, I think we should.

Jeffrey 30:29

Yeah, I think we should, because one of the things I was really struck by in that IP3 document that we got access to was... How it started from, I think, the absolutely batshit insane premise that the JCPOA had unleashed a wave of proliferation in the Middle East, right? As though, like, Iran's nuclear weapons program it had wasn't what was at fault.

It was the deal. And, you know, it was this, like, really partisan framing. But it sort of You know, it's a little bit like Brexit, I think, in this way, where, you know, for so many years, the UK and particularly Tory discourse around the European Union has been completely detached from reality. Shocking. Doesn't happen anywhere else. Right, exactly.

But, I mean, you know, you see it when they, like, show up to negotiate with the EU, and they're like, we have the upper hand. You will give us what we want. And the EU is like, no. No. It's like, but we have the upper hand. We are global Britain. And it's like, no. So, you know, it is certainly the case that political leaders can become enthralled to false beliefs about the world, right?

Yeah. And actually, there's a kind of great example of this where, you know, the 2007 NIE that showed that Iran had actually paused its nuclear weapons program under pressure. I know it said halt. I think they meant pause. They meant pause. They meant halt like a march. Like, you're marching, you halt, and then you can start marching again, which, for those of us who grew up in the era of mixtapes, is a pause, but whatever.

... I like that. You know, that NIE should have been reassuring to the Saudis, right? Yes, Iran had a weapons program, but international pressure was so great it has paused. We actually do have the upper hand here. It was deeply unsettling to them because they concluded that intelligence projects are entirely political, which is not true, and that this was a signal by the Bush administration that they had stopped believing in the Iranian threat, which just is crazy, right?

Aaron 32:58

It's something we've talked about on the podcast. It's the equation of weapons intent with enrichment.

Jeffrey 33:02

Right.

Aaron 33:02

Which is biting them now.

Jeffrey 33:04

Right. So I think – yes, right, if you apply these standards evenly. But I do think that the reality is that there's this whole group of policymakers who are – like, I would say they are insane, but they probably represent, I think, the majority of opinion in, like, D.C. and Riyadh, who really – Maybe not the majority in D.C., but, you know, it's a pretty healthy group of people who really kind of think that there is no stopping this Iranian nuclear weapons program and that the JCPOA accelerated it.

And that's, like, that's insane, but it sort of explains this policy you're getting from the Trump administration, where they seem to be pushing the Iranians to overtly violate the agreement, which you would think would not be in our interest, but I guess if you think that, like, That the existence of the agreement is preventing what we really need to deal with this problem, which I guess is like Saudi nuclear weapons, then you can imagine why you're like trying to push to collapse all of this.

But I mean, I think that's kind of what's happening, right? Is that people... I'm pretty sure in Riyadh and I think certainly in the Trump administration are just – they can't accept this idea that there have been politics in Iran and that the combination of pressure and inducements has led to this. Possibility that the nuclear weapons program is frozen, right?

Pause. Right. Well, you know, freezing... You know, it's funny. Frozen sounds very strong, but people used to hate the word freeze. I'm just not au courant with my language.

Aaron 34:50

It's like Demolition Man frozen. You can unfreeze them. I'm really dating myself in terms of movies here, but something like that.

Jeffrey 34:56

Yeah. You know, I've belabored the point, right? But I think that you can really only understand... The perspective these people are bringing if you start with the extremely questionable premise that there is literally nothing we can do to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon short of invading them.

Aaron 35:17

Right, or toppling the regime. I think that's exactly right. And, you know, but what's funny, you know, and I think this is the point to end on, is that if we end up in the place where we get a 1-2-3 agreement with the US, and I think we will, and they sort of fudge the language on enrichment, or we get something like Vietnam, which is a pledge, Maybe even less, you know, maybe even something not even going as far as the Vietnamese Pledge.

We're going to end up in a place in 2020 where it's politically more difficult. For the next administration, either in 2020 or 2024, to make future nonproliferation agreements with the Iranian, a weakened gold standard in the UAE, and a pretty weak standard with the Saudis. So the sort of nonproliferation constraints in the region are actually getting lessened rather than strengthened as a result of all this, independent of the 810s and the Argentinian low-power research.

Jeffrey 36:20

Yeah, I think that's right. And, I mean, there's a bigger conversation to be had about what technological era we're living in. Right. Because I think a lot of these tools are based on the idea that countries with low technical expertise aren't ultimately going to be able to build weapons. The Fareed Zakaria argument. Right. The Saudis can't build a car, so they aren't going to be able to build a bomb.

Right. And I just... Yes, foreign assistance is necessary at the beginning, but I just think that there is so much foreign assistance available, and the technologies themselves are not that difficult to acquire, right, because they are 70 years old or even older than that now. You know, that... We're really at a point where the traditional tools that focused on denying access to technology aren't as effective as putting in place political settlements.

And so I think the thing that people never understood about the JCPOA is that people who criticized it were like, look at all that Iran gets to do. And that's a kind of statement that makes sense in an environment where What Iran's doing is hard and costly, and so if you make it even harder and costly for them, it will fail.

But actually, Iran's not doing that much in the sense of how hard or costly it is. And so you don't really have the ability to make it fail technologically, and you don't even really have the ability to raise the cost for the Iranians to a point where it's not worth doing. And so the JCPOA kind of smartly recognized that, or it embodied a recognition, that there has to be something in it for the Iranians, that this is an act of persuasion, not coercion.

And I think the problem, like, it's hard for people to accept that because they don't like Iran. But it's going to be true of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, too. Like, we're not going to be able to physically stop them if they want to build weapons. And I think that's, you know, to go back to the thing we found, the missile facility, that's what that represents to me.

You know, we used to live in this past where, like, Israel and Iran had their own domestic missile programs and everybody else was an importer.

Aaron 38:58

Yeah.

Jeffrey 38:59

Well, you know, the Turks and the Saudis are moving to domestic production. The Syrians have imported and stood up their own domestic production capability. We haven't found one in the UAE yet, but, like, I don't actually think that's going to be beyond them. And so... We're starting to see this really robust missile race in the region that is a function of people being able to make stuff themselves.

And if we don't come up with a political settlement, then, yeah, I do think you could end up with a nuclear arms race, which we'd like. I mean, it would suck except for we would do a lot more podcasts.

Aaron 39:37

That's our happy note. I mean, I never gave what my concerns would be about Saudi Arabia just because I was listening. You know, I always... Because you try and flesh out nuclear intent, it's really difficult. But for me, it is when you have declared intent that you match with tangible steps that would allow you to reach intent.

And so the way that you try and stop that is that you can try and deny technology, which you just talked about is maybe not so feasible any longer, but then you just have to undermine it. You have to get political assurances on intent. We intend not to do this. And I think that, honestly, I agree with you.

That's where we have to end up. And then rely upon these supranational tools that we talked about, even had to go back and refresh our memories, to verify that political intent not to develop weapons. And therefore, it is not in our interests to undermine those supranational And why I find it exceedingly dangerous for people to politicize them.

And that is ultimately what concerns me, is that when you don't trust the tools that are put in place, we don't have the singular tools as a nation-state to prevent these countries from doing what they want to do. That's just no longer in our capacity as a country. And that is what worries me, is if you project six years, ten years down the road...

You know, we're basically relying on the goodwill of countries that we shouldn't rely on the goodwill of. So we want to lock them in with political arrangements because we can't deny. If that all makes sense.

Jeffrey 41:24

Yes, that was a very restrained observation you made, I have to say. I mean, I know who that's aimed at. It's true. They're dangerous people. And, well, I mean, but it goes to a fundamental, I think, Break, particularly in the United States. There are some people who want to build international institutions that constrain sovereignty because we believe there are some problems that are too big for any one state to deal with.

Like proliferation? Too hard for the U.S. to just police it by itself. We need a strong IAEA and we need the cooperation of other countries. But that means surrendering or pooling our sovereignty with theirs. Pooling our sovereignty with theirs is probably the right way to say it. So that we have enough power to be able to do good stuff.

Right. And then there are the John Boltons of the world who look at any infringement on our sovereignty, even one that... Makes us safer and more powerful in the long run as an affront to popular democracy. Right. And so I think that's the universe in which instead of seeing the IAEA as a useful capability that restricts this problem of proliferation that would really screw up our life if there were, you know, 20 or 30 countries with nuclear weapons.

You know, you look at that and you see black helicopters.

Aaron 42:50

And it's crazy, but I think that's what John Bolden sees. And his enablers in our community. But I think that's for a different podcast.

Other voice 42:59

I'm sorry.

Aaron 43:02

We have enablers. He's still going to be mean to you on Twitter. That's fine. He can come after me, whatever. I'm just – no names.

Jeffrey 43:09

Come at me, clown. Come at me.

Aaron 43:11

I can handle it. I've been going to the gym. But – Working on those Twitter muscles? Twitter muscles, yeah. My thumbs and fingers are all good to go. When we do podcasts, we've gone off the rails towards the end here. So I think we did a whole arc there, starting with why everybody should calm down about Saudi Arabia, but let's not lose focus on what's coming, and Saudi Arabia is part of that.

You can say that's a good summary of our podcast today. I would. And I think with that, I can free you to go prep to do one of your dramatic readings or get a beer or both, or I don't know, maybe have meetings at Dartmouth. I don't know what you're doing over there.

Jeffrey 43:56

I will do a dramatic reading of the 2020 commission tonight sign some books and, and then have a beer.

Aaron 44:02

That sounds pretty good. I look forward to the Twitter picture. I think by the time this is posted, it'll already up there. With that, I think I'm going to plug the site. So go on to patreon.com slash acwpodcast. And if you are a student for $3 a month... You can sign up and get access to our Slack channel, where we also post a second podcast called Brilliant Pebbles, where we talk about nonproliferation, disarmament, and arms control-related topics for shorter periods of time, but we still find very, very cool.

The same applies if you are not a student. It is just $5. That's patreon.com slash acwpodcast. And with that, Jeffrey, enjoy our good weather on the East Coast. You brought spring. You brought spring.

Jeffrey 44:46

It's raining and hailing up here.

Aaron 44:50

Okay, well, down here, a little farther south. Maybe as I flew over, I... As you were maybe turning into Boston, although you're still too high. But you know what I mean. We have spring down here in Philadelphia, so I'm happy. I'm going to go outside and have a coffee. Enjoy. And thanks, everybody, for listening.