The United States has agreed to Saudi Arabia starting a civil nuclear program, although the agreement is still informal and awaits President Donald Trump’s final approval.

• The arrangement includes U.S. assistance in starting a Saudi civilian nuclear energy program, dubbed the “123 Agreement.”
• The agreement reportedly does not require Saudi Arabia to implement standard anti-weaponization safeguards, including oversight by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The U.S. is claiming it would offer its own standard of safeguards.
• The early stages of the deal are moving forward, but President Trump has yet to sign it, most likely because it would require a congressional review and could be blocked.

Saudi Arabia is an energy superpower. It is the second-largest producer and exporter of oil after the U.S. The main reason it wants a nuclear program is that it fears an Iranian nuclear bomb and wants nuclear parity.

Starting a nuclear program without UN oversight corroborates this motive.

• In 2023, Bret Baier asked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who runs the government under his father, King Salman, what he would do if Iran got a nuclear weapon. He responded: “If they get one, we have to get one—for security reasons, for balancing power in the Middle East.”
• Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense treaty with nuclear-armed Pakistan last year. Saudi Arabia came close to activating it against Iran during the Iran war’s active fighting.

Saudi Arabia is not Iran. Nobody thinks Saudi Arabia will start a nuclear World War iii intentionally out of religious zealotry. But it is still an autocracy in an unstable part of the world.

• For countries like Saudi Arabia to be rushing toward a nuclear bomb demonstrates the dangerous era we live in.

Jesus Christ prophesied in Matthew 24:21-22 that this nuclear era would culminate in “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no nor ever shall be.” Learn more in Gerald Flurry’s free booklet Nuclear Armageddon Is ‘At the Door.’