Pepe Escobar
@RealPepeEscobar
8h
The US-Saudi nuclear "deal"; my dear friend Junaid puts it all in perspective:
https://middleeastmonitor.com/20260724-the-nuclear-leash-washingtons-deal-to-put-saudi-arabia-back-in-its-place/
"The United States has presented its new nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia as a gift: reactors, technology, investment, prestige, and the radiant promise of a peaceful atomic future.
Washington is forever giving gifts of this kind. Curiously, they tend to arrive fitted with surveillance equipment, political conditions, and a discreetly concealed choke chain."
"This is not merely a civil nuclear agreement. It is a disciplinary instrument aimed at Mohammed bin Salman — a strategic summons issued to a crown prince who has recently behaved less like an obedient client and more like the ruler of an indispensable state."
"First, it has moved too close to Pakistan. The Saudi–Pakistani relationship is hardly new: money, soldiers, intelligence cooperation, religious patronage, and strategic ambiguity have bound the two states for decades."
"The nuclear deal places Washington back at the center of Saudi strategic planning. Technology creates dependency; dependency creates leverage; leverage restores obedience."
"Nuclear cooperation produces decades of training, maintenance, fuel arrangements, regulatory influence, security coordination, and elite access. Washington is not selling machinery. It is purchasing strategic occupancy."
"The reactor, then, is the bait. Israel is the condition. Pakistan is the warning. China and Russia are the targets."
"And the leash, freshly polished and marketed as partnership, remains unmistakably American."
