U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry (with sword), alongside Saudi energy ministerOne year has passed since the brutal murder, and macabre dismemberment, of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbal, Turkey, at the hands of a high-level Saudi regime death squad. Official U.S. and United Nations reports implicate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in having ordered the assassination. The genocidal Saudi-led war and siege of Yemen continues, with Houthi rebel attacks igniting Saudi oil fields deep within the country, and causing recent large-scale Saudi coalition casualties at the front lines on its border. Is this a place where nuclear power plants should be built? Bennett Ramberg warned in 1985 that nuclear power plants could serve as pre-deployed weapons for an enemy, if they chose to attack them, veritable dirty bombs of immense size. In fact, Houthi forces previously fired a warning shot across the bow at a pre-operational nuclear plant in United Arab Emirates; the atomic reactor has since fired up, unfortunately. Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, while still serving as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned that the reason Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia were pursuing nuclear power, was in order to have a pathway to nuclear weapons, if they chose to use it that way. In fact, MBS has admitted as much on a CBS "60 Minutes" interview. Despite the inherent risk that uranium enrichment and/or plutonium reprocessing can be used for nuclear weapons production, the Trump administration has continuously tried to do end runs around congressional safeguards against nuclear weapons proliferation, in order to transfer U.S. nuclear technology and know how to Saudi Arabia. U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee, has reported that corporate and personal greed are a prime motivation, despite the risks. Scandalously, the same Canadian firm that bailed out Jared Kushner's family from its billion dollar, bad real estate investment at 666 5th Avenue in Manhattan, also owns Westinghouse Nuclear, which is vying to sell atomic reactors to Saudi Arabia; Kushner has been Trump's point person in all things Saudi Arabian. But Trump's Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, has also met with his Saudi counterparts, regarding nuclear commerce, including recently (see photo, above left, of Perry in Saudi-style robe, holding a sword, shown with Saudi Minister of Energy, Khalid al-Falih; Perry is now implicated in the Trump impeachment inquiry as well, as reported by the Washington Post, having led the Trump administration delegation to Ukrainian President Zelensky's inauguration.) As decades-long, leading congressional nuclear watchdog, U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), pointed out a decade ago, "Saudi Arabia is the Saudi Arabia of solar power!" Nuclear power makes no sense there, from a safety, security, and non-proliferation perspective. Saudi nuclear power risks an arms race with Israel (which already has nuclear weapons), Iran (there are fears it could use its nuclear power industry to break out into nuclear weapons production), and perhaps other countries. As U.S. Representative Brad Sherman (D-CA) has put it, "A country that can't be trusted with a bone saw shouldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons."
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