“DESTABILISING”
“If Riyadh had wanted to just have US backing for a civilian programme, it would have done so years ago … the goal is to get US support for a deal that doesn’t fully exclude a pathway” to a weapons programme, analyst Michael Horowitz wrote, in a post on X.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stressed there are safeguards against proliferation.
“This is destabilising … because it sends a message of an American double standard,” Heloise Fayet, a specialist at French research centre IFRI told AFP.
This potential double standard points most obviously at Iran, which the US and Israel attacked at the end of February, in part citing the goal of preventing Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Iran has long denied seeking a weapon and defended its right to enrich uranium for nuclear energy.
Washington “can hardly emphasise its desire to maintain a nuclear counter-proliferation policy on the one hand and, on the other, accept such a deal with the Saudis,” David Khalfa, a Middle East specialist at the Paris-based Jean-Jaures Foundation think tank, told AFP.
“Saudi Arabia is not supposed to be an exception” otherwise “the entire security architecture built since 1945 collapses,” he said.