Opinion
Ken Timmerman’s Threat Watch, www.kentimmerman.com 5-9-25
| Donald Trump is headed to Saudi Arabia this weekend, where the Saudis will put on a magnificent welcome, including the famous “sword dance.” The “ardah,” as it’s called in Arabic, began as a preparation for war, but has long become ceremonial and is used at marriages and national celebrations across the Arabian peninsula. (I attended one in the UAE in the mid-1990s). So Trump will now be able to say, as did his secretary of state in 2017, Rex Tillerson, that he’s not at his first sword dance. These overseas presidential trips take a huge amount of preparation, as a Florida friend who used to work as a military liaison to the Clinton White House recently reminded me. And there is a lot at stake for the United States and the Middle East writ large. Trump had been hoping to announce a new installment of the Abraham Accords. And while they may still be in the cards, the rumors that the Saudis are not yet prepared to recognize Israel argues against it. After all, the lynch pin of the Abraham Accords was the fact they were a peace deal between Israel and its neighbors. You can’t make peace if you don’t recognize your partner’s right to exist as a nation state. Ask Vladimir Putin about that. On the table will be a US offer, first discussed by Jared Kushner during the first Abraham Accords negotiations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, to help Saudi Arabia transition to nuclear power. The agreement will include massive industrial contracts for U.S. nuclear power plant designers and manufacturers. The Saudis will also agree to do what the Iranians have never accepted, and that is to forego any access to uranium enrichment technology. We will supply the fuel rods for the Saudi power plants, and take them back for reprocessing. All the pageantry will take place against the ominous backdrop of Iran’s nuclear weapons developments and dark hints of a rift in U.S.-Israel relations. Earlier in the week, President Trump announced a “truce” with the Houthis in Yemen, claiming that a relentless U.S. bombing campaign had won a pledge from the Houthis to stop attacks on U.S. warships and international shipping in the Red Sea. This came just two days after the Houthis successfully attacked Israel’s only international airport outside Tel Aviv, and the Israeli air force pummeled their commercial airport in Sanaa. Now we learn that the Israelis were blindsided by Trump’s announcement, and dispatched National Security Minister Ron Dermer for an unannounced meeting at the White House on Thursday. Hours after Dermer’s visit, FoxNews released “exclusive” satellite photographs of a previously undisclosed Iranian nuclear weapons facility it says it obtained from the Marxist-Islamist Iranian opposition group, the Mujahadin-e Khalq, or MEK. The MEK claimed responsibility in 2003 for the initial leaks about Iran’s buried uranium enrichment plants that triggered the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, to finally begin serious inspections inside Iran. I know something about those earlier revelations, and suspect the same thing is going on today. As I detail in my latest book, The Iran House: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, the Israelis were the ones who first discovered Iran’s then-secret uranium enrichment plants, but had failed to get the U.S. or the IAEA to act on the intelligence. They first offered the intelligence to Reza Pahlavi, son of the former shah, but his aides went nuts. As one of them told me, there was no way their networks could have discovered such intelligence inside Iran and everyone knew it, so it would be obvious to everyone that they had gotten the information from Israel. Undaunted if a bit disappointed, the Israelis then offered the intelligence package to the MEK, who leapt at it. This time it wasn’t just a secret enrichment plant the Iranians had been hiding, but allegedly a plant to manufacture tritium, a radioisotope that is only used to enhance the yield of nuclear weapons. The United States has one tritium production facility, the Savannah River Site near Savannah, Georgia. It contains five nuclear reactors with their distinctive cooling towers, where lithium targets are irradiated to produce tritium. The satellite photos given to FoxNews reveal no evidence of a nuclear power reactor. So either the Iranians have discovered a new method for producing tritium, or they are secretly introducing lithium fuel rods into their Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushier, a clear violation of their safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Both are unlikely. A third possibility is that the Russian’s shipped the irradiated lithium targets to Iran. This would be a clear violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty by both Russia and Iran, but who’s counting? As all of this is taking place, we are also witnessing a clear divide within the Trump administration, with Vice-President JD Vance saying this week that the U.S. is “happy” at how the Iranians have been responding to the issues raised in the first three rounds of nuclear talks, while Marco Rubio and the president have been taking a harder line. “There are only two alternatives there,” Trump told Hugh Hewitt earlier in the week, referring to Iran’s uranium centrifuge program. “[B]low them up nicely or blow them up viciously.” Iran can’t be allowed to enrich uranium, period. I discuss this, as well as the latest developments in the trade wars and the military clashes between India and Pakistan and how they bode poorly for NATO weapons against the Chinese, in this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend. As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. Otherwise, you can listen later to the podcast here. Yours in freedom, Ken |
| Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here. Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here. – Senior Fellow, America First Policy Institute (current) – Republican nominee for Congress, Maryland District 8 (2012) – President & CEO, Foundation for Democracy in Iran, www.iran.org – Nobel Peace Prize nominee, 2006 Cell: 904-817-8584 NEW NUMBER Follow me on Twitter @kentimmerman Facebook: ken timmerman New personal email: [email protected] Website: kentimmerman.com |
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
