AMY GOODMAN: A newly signed U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal is in question after President Trump said Thursday the deal is off unless Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia has maintained it would not officially recognize Israel and join the Abraham Accords until there’s a pathway toward the creation of a Palestinian state. Trump made the declaration Thursday, a day after Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister signed the agreement. The official text of the agreement has not been released yet. Congress must review the deal and has 90 days to consider it.

The deal would allow for the U.S. to help Saudi Arabia build a civilian nuclear energy program using U.S. technology. Critics warn the deal could lead to Saudi Arabia developing a nuclear weapon and spark a new arms race in the Middle East. The U.S.-Saudi deal is likely worth tens of billions of dollars to U.S. nuclear energy companies like Westinghouse, whose reactors produce plutonium as a byproduct. Nonproliferation experts warn the waste could be reprocessed for use in nuclear warheads.

This all comes as the U.S. has carried out a 13th consecutive day of strikes on Iran. President Trump told Axios he’s weighing whether to launch a “massive attack” on Iran that would be, quote, “bigger than ever before,” unquote.

We’re joined now by Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

Daniel, welcome back to Democracy Now! Let us start with the nuclear deal. So, a nuclear deal is announced between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Anti-nuclear activists condemn it, but also Israel condemns it, saying that Trump did not extract enough concessions from Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel, the Abraham Accords. If you can respond to what’s going on here — President Trump then saying, OK, they’ll recognize the Abraham Accords — where you think this is going?

DANIEL LEVY: Right. So, let’s start with this appears absolutely on brand. For a deal to be done, apparently there’s nothing in there about the conditionality — for this to take effect, Saudi has to join this Abraham Accords, normalize, without anything on the Palestinian front, with Israel. Trump then, apparently, just makes something up, puts out a social media post, which undermines what was agreed just the day before — very on brand.

What you have today, Amy, in Israel is a kind of victory lap by Netanyahu. His office has put out his own post saying, “Only thanks to our fantastic war against Iran and being strong have we been able to impose this condition.” They are saying, “Here we are again. Israel is calling the shots again with the United States.” Just earlier this week, you had a senior Israeli minister saying, “It’s very good, what’s going on between the U.S. and Iran at the moment. Let the Americans do the work. Let them fight the war.” So, that’s the response there.

But if you step back a moment, then maybe this is, in the long run — maybe not such a long run — another moment of clarity that is not going to work well for Israel, because let’s just look at this. If this deal was good for America, served American national security interests, served American economic interests, not just the profiteering of a few companies who may or may not be close and future or current contributors to Trump and others’ election campaigns — but if this was good for America, then why would you condition it on getting something for Israel? Is this America first or Israel first? Who is the driving force here? So, if it’s good for America, do it. Don’t make this conditional on getting something for Israel. It’s the same game, by the way, that the Biden administration played for. So, I think this will just further embellish this debate around America first, Israel first, the unpopularity of America being subservient to Israel, first of all.

Second of all, in Saudi Arabia, how does this play out? They think they’ve done a deal. Then the Americans throw this wrench into the works. And the Saudis, yet again, are going to be scratching their heads and saying, “Well, these guys just aren’t serious. They constantly undermine their own interests for Israel. Israel is a destabilizing, radicalizing factor in the region. Yes, we’re not going to cut links. We’re going to continue to be close to the U.S. But we have to hedge. We have to further look elsewhere for how we address our interests, because the Americans can’t be trusted.” And finally, I would simply say I do not think Saudi is about to normalize on these terms for a nuclear deal with America. That’s not what’s actually going to be the outcome of this, is my assessment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Daniel, I wanted to follow up on that, this whole issue that the Saudi government has long claimed that it would not normalize relations with Israel unless there was a clear path to Palestinian statehood. Wondering your thoughts about that, but also about the impact on any negotiations with Iran, since, according to what we know so far about this agreement, the claims are that there will not be the kind of stringent inspection requirements on Saudi Arabia’s enrichment program that the U.S. typically holds with any type of transfers of technology, and also the kind of stringent requirements that the U.S. was seeking to impose on Iran in any kind of negotiated deal about its nuclear energy program.

DANIEL LEVY: Right. So, first of all, Saudi has officially repeatedly made the case that, especially in the current circumstances, especially with everything that we’ve seen going on in Gaza, but also elsewhere — Saudi was one of the eight states, Arab- and Muslim-majority states, that put out a — issued a statement just yesterday, following the latest Israeli disturbances, the latest kind of Israeli takeover on the Al-Aqsa compound in the Old City of Jerusalem, to condemn that, to say that has to be reversed. Saudi has taken this position that there is going to have to be irreversible movement towards a Palestinian state. We may get to a moment, Juan, where the definition of what that clear, irreversible movement is will be tested. It may fall well short of what many Palestinians would like to see. It may not. But the moment we are in right now does not lend itself to an Abraham Accords-style total abandonment of the Palestinians, warm embrace of Israel, under these circumstances. So I don’t think that is going to happen.

As to the nuclear component of that — sorry, actually, before I go to that, to say one other thing, for Israel, what they want is precisely this kind of arrangement, to say, “We can do anything to the Palestinians, and we will get normalization.” So, for Israel to have the U.S. again front-loading Israeli demands, while simultaneously the U.S. is fighting this war which Israel was instrumental in getting it into in Iran, while simultaneously Israel is given absolutely free rein in Gaza — so-called ceasefire, more than 1,200 Palestinians killed; West Bank, as we speak now, there are settler rampages, with the army either supportive or standing by, taking place, massive destruction of infrastructure inside the West Bank, what I just mentioned in terms of changing the status quo at Al-Aqsa. So, from the Israeli perspective, what’s not to like, unless you’re being strategic and foresighted, in which case you say, “We are losing public support in America”?

But anyway, parking that, the actual nuclear enrichment civil program provisions, from what we understand — we don’t, I think, have the details — from what we understand has been agreed between the U.S. and Saudi, it’s hard to make the case that you would make this deal at the same time that you’re trying to impose more onerous conditions on Iran, and think this works well for you. So, something is — has gone astray here. But it does follow decades of an American policy which is impossible to see as consistent or credible and that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, not only in terms of these safeguards — what you have in one context versus what you’re demanding in another.

But if we just zoom out for a moment, the biggest elephant in the room, which is that Israel is a nuclear-armed state in the region. If you actually want a denuclearized, a WMD-free Middle East-West Asia, then you don’t continue to indulge your ally, who not only is free of any kind of inspection regime, but who has a nuclear weapon. So, you can’t be serious on this front. That’s one of the things that’s hobbled and undermined this whole Iran obsession all along.

By the way, I think if Saudi were intent, were hell-bent on a nuclear weapons program, there are simpler ways of getting there. There is the relationship with Pakistan. People have often pointed to that. But this is likely to lead to more of a potential proliferation. Other states in the region are going to look at it and say, “Well, maybe we need to be in the business of an enrichment program that could, as and when needed, be used.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And briefly —

DANIEL LEVY: Be used elsewhere.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — in about 30 seconds or so, could you talk about the optics of the United States reaching this deal with Saudi Arabia, nearing the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, where not only Osama bin Laden but the majority of the hijackers were Saudi?

DANIEL LEVY: Look, I think that’s something that may play out less, actually. You just mentioned that, Juan. Others are going to — are going to be looking at that. But I doubt that’s going to drive the conversation.

I think the conversation will be much more driven by this moment in American relations in the West Asia-Middle East region, the fact that this is happening at a time where the U.S. is back in an escalatory cycle with Iran, but where it does not look like the U.S. has any better options now than it did during the earlier months of this war, and we’re back testing not so much the history of U.S.-Saudi relations, but we’re back testing U.S. resilience, U.S. pain thresholds as compared to those of Iran.

There is no doubt that the U.S. is doing great harm to Iran. Iran is taking major hits. But will the U.S. be able to continue with this? To what end? What is it trying to achieve? We don’t have any good answers to any of those questions. And we could well see a further escalation without any of that being resolved, and we’re back actually arguing over how do you reverse something that didn’t exist when you started this illegal war, which is the whole question of opening the Hormuz Strait. So, I think Americans are going to see that this isn’t working for them very quickly. It’s an unpopular war, and I don’t think the president is going to benefit from it.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under two Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

Coming up, “Cockroach Democracy: Unarmed and Dangerous.” We’ll speak to the prize-winning Indian author Arundhati Roy about the massive youth-led protests spreading across India. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Khatar,” “Danger,” by the Palestinian oud musician Huda Asfour, performing in our Democracy Now! studio. To see her performances and her interview, go to democracynow.org.