World Review: The US-Saudi Nuke Deal. More Tariffs. A New UK Government
A synopsis of this week's edition of World Review
Each week, I host a video podcast called World Review with Ivo Daalder where journalists from major news outlets around the world join me to discuss the latest global news stories of the week.
World Review can now be heard on Sundays, at 7:00 a.m. Central Time, on Chicago’s NPR station, WBEZ, or on the WBEZ app. We’ll still tape the show on Fridays, and post the video on YouTube and the audio version on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Now, on to this week’s show. We covered three stories: the new U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal, the administration’s latest tariff wall, and Britain’s brand-new government. I was joined by Felicia Schwartz, diplomatic correspondent at POLITICO; Robbie Gramer, national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal; and, for the first time, Hugh Tomlinson, international editor at The Observer.
While I encourage you to watch or listen to the episode (and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!), here are a few interesting things I took away from our discussion.
Who’s Next? Riyadh’s Atomic Upgrade and Trump’s Vanishing Carrot
Washington and Riyadh have signed a civilian nuclear agreement that could eventually let Saudi Arabia enrich its own uranium. Unlike the “gold standard” deal Washington struck with the UAE in 2009, this one doesn’t require forswearing enrichment or accepting the toughest inspections. Felicia noted nobody has seen the final text yet, and a two-year feasibility study stands between signature and centrifuges. But her read was unambiguous: a real departure from a decades-old nonproliferation goal, and the “black box” framing — no technology transfer — is cold comfort, since centrifuges built for one purpose have a way of finding another.
The timing puzzled Hugh most. We are five months into a war meant to stop Iran from enriching uranium, after Europeans spent a quarter-century trying diplomacy toward the same end — so why hand Riyadh a version of the very capability everyone has spent a generation keeping out of the region? Robbie’s answer: politics and technocracy converged, months of quiet negotiation finishing just as the moment turned politically ripe. Of course, nothing is ever as it seems. Less than 24 hours after signing, Trump through a curveball: The US President insisted that Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords as a condition of approval, catching and angering a kingdom nowhere near ready to normalize with Israel while Gaza still festers. Felicia’s line stuck with me: Trump’s dealmaking follows his old real-estate instinct — best terms up front, then the price rises the longer it drags on. That’s now how the Saudis are feeling — the carrot is vanishing. But the nuclearization of the Middle East is still squarely on the table. Iran wants the bomb, and so does Saudi Arabia if it does. Turkey, Egypt, and a UAE could follow suit. So you understand why I kept thinking of Tom Lehrer’s old song about the bomb: who’s next, indeed.
The Tariff Boogeyman Returns
Robbie’s framing was the line of the episode: this tariff round is “something out of a horror movie where just when you think the boogeyman is gone... there’s a jump scare.” Ten to twelve-and-a-half percent duties on goods from more than sixty countries, justified this time by forced-labor findings rather than the national emergency tariff logic the Supreme Court struck down in February. The legal architecture — Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act — is meant to be sturdier basis for the tariffs, and allies have adjusted. The EU, at ten percent, is “pretty satisfied”; Canada, hit with fifty percent under a dormant 1930s statute, is not. Hugh reported a “collective eye roll” in London, filed under the cost of doing business with this White House.
Felicia’s noted that when she talks to foreign officials, their frustration isn’t the rate — it’s the constantly shifting rationale. Meet the trade negotiator and you get a technocratic explanation; watch what happens and the legal cover looks improvised. Exhibit A: diamond imports were quietly exempted shortly after Trump received a 325-diamond ring as a negotiating gift — echoes of the Swiss gold bar that once solved a similar problem. Tariffs also played on Capitol Hill, with the Senate’s near-unanimous Russia sanctions bill, championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham, handing Trump new tariff authority over countries buying Russian and Iranian oil. Robbie explained why some Ukraine-supporting Democrats held their noses to vote yes, while others, like Senator Andy Kim, voted no precisely because they didn’t trust Trump with that power. His summary of the administration’s deals, in three words: “big … if true.”
Number 10’s New Tenant, and the Podium Man Who Wasn’t
Andy Burnham is Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade, and Hugh — newly returned to London after nearly twenty years abroad — framed the moment with real whiplash: he left when Gordon Brown was PM and New Labour was dying, and came home to find Labour already devouring its second leader after finally having returned to power. Yet his read was more hopeful than that history suggests: clearer communication out of Number 10, real specifics on social care and devolution, a sense — missing under Starmer — that the government knows what it wants. Burnham has had luck, too: Reform’s leader Nigel Farage is mired in a by-election caused by a corruption scandal, and Washington’s choice not to intervene in the Tate brothers’ extradition case spared the new government an early transatlantic headache.
On the U.S. relationship, Felicia noted the working-level machinery — Five Eyes, Pentagon-to-MoD — hums along regardless of who’s in Downing Street, but there’s strikingly little curiosity in Washington about Burnham himself. What Britain can do, she and Hugh agreed, is signal: a Trident renewal commitment aimed at Trump’s defense-spending demands, talk of North Sea oil exploration, keeping U.S. bases available for the Iran war. Tellingly, John Healy, who resigned as defense secretary over the pace of spending increases, is now the chancellor tasked with finding the money he once demanded. Robbie added the wider frame — Britain still punches above its weight in NATO, providing bases for U.S. bombers for the Iran strikes, holding the eastern flank. On Ukraine, Hugh sees no daylight opening: continuity, not retreat, though new Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband may find Washington a harder audience than Brussels. Felicia closed with the detail I loved: Britain has a minor celebrity, the AV man who wheels out the prime ministerial podium for each new PM — and Burnham, breaking tradition, skipped him. A small thing, but maybe a preview of how differently this government means to do business.
Those are my quick takes on this week’s episode of World Review. To get the full story, please listen to the episode itself.