implications

United States President Donald Trump agreed to a 30-year nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia on Wednesday that would see Washington transfer nuclear technology to the Gulf kingdom.

This has drawn concerns that if the deal comes to fruition, it could spark a nuclear arms race across the Middle East amid reports that Riyadh would be able to enrich its own uranium, a necessary step in acquiring nuclear weapons.

US officials have stressed the proposed deal would serve civilian nuclear purposes, although exact details of the agreement have not been made public.

It has now been tabled in the US Congress for a review, but is expected to survive resistance from Democrats.

Here’s why some are concerned about the agreement:

Could this spur a nuclear arms race in the region?

Analysts have raised concerns about whether the proposed deal could lead to Saudi Arabia seeking to develop military-grade uranium, which the US Energy Department has not yet confirmed.

Some analysts have warned this could open the door to spurring an arms race with other regional powers.

Saudi Arabia has long voiced its intention to use nuclear energy for power generation, but in 2018, de facto leader Mohammad bin Salman told CBS that Riyadh would “without a doubt” develop a nuclear weapon if Iran did the same.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted on Thursday that the deal would not lead to nuclear proliferation, as US contractors would handle the project, allowing Washington to monitor it. US nuclear reactor designer Westinghouse is believed to be a major contractor.

Former Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a post on X on Wednesday that Israel must oppose the deal with “all our might.”

“We must all understand that Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear programme will end in nuclear weapons and lead to a mad arms race across the entire Middle East,” he posted.

Israel, which developed a nuclear arsenal in the 1960s, has long sought to stop Arab countries and other regional countries from gaining their own nuclear weapons.

Is there a risk of nuclear reactors being attacked in strikes?

Some others have also raised concerns over possible nuclear leaks amid the tensions in the Middle East.

Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, for example, has seen some of its outer facilities hit in the US and Israel’s war on Iran. Iran too has hit the perimeter of the United Arab Emirates’ Barakah nuclear power plant in a drone strike.

None of these strikes hit the nuclear plants’ reactors, but analysts say allowing more such facilities in the Middle East when tensions are so high is a mistake.

Damage to a reactor’s core could release highly radioactive gases, causing immediate catastrophic damage within a 20- to 30-kilometre (12- to 18-mile) radius.

Nuclear accidents at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011 and Chornobyl in Ukraine in the former Soviet Union in 1986 are cautionary stories.

Could Saudi Arabia have access to sensitive material?

That’s unclear for now.

Highly enriched uranium and spent nuclear reactor fuel are key components of nuclear bombs.

According to US media, the agreement includes a clause providing for a “black box” uranium enrichment facility that would be situated in Saudi Arabia but run by US companies.

A joint study by the two countries, set to last two years, will determine whether such a facility is needed, or if Saudi Arabia should import commercial-grade low-enriched uranium.

“That’s really the concern,” Matthew Kroenig, a fellow with the Atlantic Council, told Al Jazeera, saying there’s been no such arrangement anywhere else in the world.

“What does the US really mean by a ‘black box’? So will the US bring its engineers there full time, forever? Realistically, the Saudis will be involved, they will learn the tech, and they could kick out the US in the future,” Kroenig said.

Washington could be seeking to model Moscow’s agreement with Turkiye and Egypt, where Russian contractors manage active nuclear power plants, including the needed uranium and the highly radioactive spent fuel from the reactors.

The difference, Kroenig pointed out, is that Russia does not enrich the uranium in those cases.

On the other hand, the UAE, which runs a civilian nuclear programme that has been held up as a gold standard for non-proliferation, imports all of its low-enriched uranium from France, the United Kingdom and Russia among other countries.

Kroenig suggested that the US could be using the two-year study as a negotiating tactic, noting that the same claims of impact studies have been used to stall South Korea’s requests to enrich its own uranium.

“The deal doesn’t immediately speak about uranium enrichment, so my hope is that this is a negotiating tactic and that after two years the US will say ‘oh no, this doesn’t make sense right now’”, he said.

Days after declaring the Bab al-Mandeb (BAM) Strait closed to Saudi vessels, the Houthis of Yemen claim to have struck two ships in the Red Sea. The United Kingdom’s Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) group has confirmed an attack on at least one vessel in that area.

“The Yemeni armed forces have carried out a significant military operation targeting two Saudi oil tankers that violated the ban imposed by the armed forces in the Red Sea,” the Houthis claimed on Telegram. “The operation involved a number of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones. Thanks to God’s help, the strikes were accurate and caused a large fire on both vessels.”

TWZ cannot independently verify the Houthi claim. However, in a post on X, UKMTO stated that a master of an oil tanker “reports being struck by an unknown projectile which has caused a fire onboard that the crew are currently fighting.”

The incident took place 70NM southwest of Al Shuqaiq, Saudi Arabia, the organization added. “There are no reported casualties and no environmental impact. Authorities are investigating. Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to UKMTO.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling allowing the administration of US President Donald Trump to do away with a special legal status for Haitians and Syrians has sent shockwaves through communities across the country.

Immigration advocates say the 6-3 majority decision allowing the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) will have a resounding impact on nationals of Haiti and Syria, raising the spectre of deportation and family separation, while likely leaving US employers in the lurch.

But the ruling is set to have more far-reaching implications, advocates have warned, creating a new tool to “empower Trump’s ICE deportation machine to take away legal protections and work permits from hundreds of thousands of people”, according to Hector Sanchez Barba, the president of the Mi Familia Vota advocacy group.

“This has been a defining element of the Trump- [White House adviser Stephen] Miller campaign of cruelty, revoking legal or temporary status, taking away work permits and forcing immigration judges to dismiss cases to accelerate detentions and deportations,” Barba said in a statement following Thursday’s ruling.

Here’s what to know.

What does the ruling mean for Haitians and Syrians on TPS?

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was created by Congress as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allowed the executive branch, particularly the Secretary of Homeland Security, to declare that it is unsafe for foreigners to return to their home countries in light of extraordinary temporary conditions, such as armed conflict, natural disasters or other internal crises.

When a country is designated under TPS, its nationals are granted temporary legal status to reside and work in the US.

Haiti was first designated for TPS following the devastating earthquake in 2010, which killed over 250,000 people. The status has been repeatedly renewed as the Caribbean nation has suffered overlapping political, security and humanitarian crises.

Syria has been designated for the status since 2012, after the start of the civil war which lasted almost 14 years.

All told, about 350,000 Haitians and about 6,000 Syrians are believed to be in this status.

Immigration advocates say the ruling will send TPS recipients scrambling to find other legal pathways to stay in the US or become deportable under Trump’s mass deportation drive.

Given that both countries have been designated for TPS for over a decade, the decision also raises the spectre of family separation, particularly for parents with children born in the US.

“Ending these protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and thousands of Syrians will tear families apart, disrupt workplaces and communities and place vulnerable individuals at risk,” Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) national executive director Nihad Awad said.

“Many TPS holders have lived in our nation for years, raised American children, built businesses, contributed to our economy and become integral members of their communities.”

What does it mean for US employers?

Several labour organisations and unions have underscored the impact the sudden change in status could have on US industries.

Neidi Dominguez, the executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, called the ruling a “gut punch that requires workers, immigrant communities and the employers who rely on them to hit back together through our organising”.

“They work in hospitality, food service, education, construction, health care and every industry,” Dominguez said. “These are our coworkers, our neighbours and the backbone of the economy across this country, from service to construction and healthcare.”

The healthcare industry is expected to be particularly hard-hit by the decision, with the Migration Policy Institute finding that Haitian immigrants held over 103,000 healthcare jobs in 2021.

“This unconscionable ruling will leave thousands more immigrants – not just registered nurses and healthcare workers, but also teachers, airport workers, hard-working people – vulnerable to the Trump administration’s deadly, money-making deportation machine,” the National Nurses United union said in a statement.

“This decision will further strain our healthcare workforce and worsen the nurse staffing crisis,” it said.

Why does this extend beyond Haitian and Syrian TPS?

Lower courts had previously ruled that the Trump administration did not follow proper procedures, including conducting an inter-agency review to determine that conditions in both countries had improved, in terminating TPS for Haiti and Syria.

But, as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council, explained, the Supreme Court’s majority ruling did not even address whether the Department of Homeland Security Secretary had followed the legally mandated procedures in terminating TPS.

“Rather, the Court said that questions of whether the DHS secretary followed the law cannot be heard by courts in the first place,” he wrote, “meaning that in the future even an openly unlawful decision to grant or terminate TPS could be entirely insulated from judicial review”.

The ruling will further allow the Trump administration to “return to federal court in other cases and overturn decisions ruling against the termination of TPS for countries such as Venezuela, Somalia, Ethiopia and others”, he added.

Angelica Sedgwick Oun, a US immigration researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the ruling “leaves the DHS secretary with unfettered power to make a life-and-death decision about whether it is safe enough to send someone back to a country facing rampant violence, like Haiti, or conflict, like Syria, without meaningfully consulting on human rights conditions there”.

What comes next?

Because the Supreme Court is the top appellate court in the US, there is little recourse available through the judiciary.

But an array of advocacy groups have called on Congress to intervene.

In a rare bipartisan move on immigration, the US House of Representatives in April passed an extension to Temporary Protected Status for Haitians until 2029. The Senate has not yet taken up the measure.

Others have called on Congress to pass legislation to assert a process for courts to review any TPS terminations.