{"id":820472,"date":"2026-07-23T08:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/820472\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T08:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T08:40:13","slug":"democrats-prepare-to-resist-saudi-nuclear-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/820472\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats prepare to resist Saudi nuclear deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration has yet to formally notify Congress of its nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, but Democrats are already laying the groundwork for an attempt to block it.<\/p>\n

The civil nuclear pact, announced Wednesday, is designed to strengthen US-Saudi relations as President Donald Trump seeks an end to the Iran war plus funnel billions of dollars<\/a> to the US nuclear industry. <\/p>\n

But lawmakers in both parties will have questions about the details, especially the deal\u2019s anticipated lack of additional nuclear oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency.<\/p>\n

Once the Energy Department transmits the deal to Congress as promised, the Atomic Energy Act<\/a> gives lawmakers 90 legislative days to adopt a joint resolution disapproving of the agreement or let it automatically take effect. Democrats on relevant House and Senate committees told Semafor they\u2019re already approaching the Saudi deal with a high degree of skepticism \u2014 citing, among other issues, the Trump administration\u2019s escalating Iran war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very concerned\u201d over the deal, Rep. Greg Meeks, D-N.Y., his party\u2019s top House Foreign Affairs Committee member, told Semafor. He added that \u201cthe timing seems funny,\u201d and that the nuclear pact \u201cseems as though it might be something that the Trump administration is doing to pay the Saudis to do something in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats, still in the congressional minority, have dim prospects at winning passage of any disapproval resolution. Their level of pushback against the nuclear deal, however, could create a new and unwelcome political headache for Republicans who are fighting to preserve their majorities this fall amid the spiking unpopularity of Trump\u2019s Iran war.<\/p>\n

Any Senate vote to overturn the deal would be at a simple majority, meaning that Trump would only have to keep most of his party in line and, at worst case, survive a veto override. That\u2019s likely: Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said he initially had questions about the deal but after reviewing it is not \u201cuncomfortable\u201d with it.<\/p>\n

Meeks\u2019 Senate counterpart, Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, told Semafor she believes the deal is \u201cgoing to have to come before the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Foreign Relations Democrat, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, said he\u2019s \u201cpretty nervous\u201d that the Saudi pact doesn\u2019t meet the so-called gold standard set by the US\u2019 nuclear deal with the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n

That agreement allowed for IAEA oversight of the UAE\u2019s civil nuclear activity, a provision not expected to be part of the new US-Saudi deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s set up the way I think,\u201d Kaine added, he expects that the lack of added IAEA safeguards \u201cwill probably lead to some kind of vote about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese civilian nuclear deals have to comply with the toughest nuclear nonproliferation standards \u2026 to avoid the risk of any country obtaining a nuclear weapon,\u201d agreed Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., another Foreign Relations member.<\/p>\n

Van Hollen pointed to GOP opposition<\/a> to his proposal to prohibit the Export-Import Bank from helping to fund any nuclear agreement that did not meet the highest possible standards: \u201cThat was not a good signal, because it suggested that they\u2019d be willing to support an agreement without adequate safeguards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Semafor that the Saudi nuclear pact \u201chas the potential to greatly destabilize the region\u201d and put any durable nuclear truce with Iran further out of the administration\u2019s reach.<\/p>\n

Democratic centrists aligned with Israel are poised to criticize the deal for a separate reason: The Trump administration chose not to make normalized ties to Israel a requirement for any Saudi nuclear pact.<\/p>\n

That decision was \u201ca major strategic mistake,\u201d Brian Romick, president and CEO of the group Democratic Majority for Israel, said in a statement. \u201cThis deal is also likely to be counterproductive to the administration\u2019s pursuit of an agreement with Iran to curtail its own nuclear program.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration has yet to formally notify Congress of its nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, but Democrats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-820472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}