The Trump administration has finalized a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that opens the door to the Kingdom enriching uranium on its own soil, forgoing the strictest nonproliferation conditions that arms control advocates had pushed for. The deal, structured as a 30-year “123 Agreement,” is designed to give US companies a central role in building out Saudi nuclear infrastructure, including a domestically sited enrichment facility, while generating billions of dollars in contracts for the American nuclear industry.

The same agreement produced two verdicts this week. Wall Street read the US-Iran memorandum of understanding as the end of a war, sent oil below $79, and pushed the major indices to records. A senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee read it as a hollow ceasefire that settles nothing. Both verdicts are defensible, because they are measuring different things — and the gap between them is the story.

Congressman John Garamendi (CA-08), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and Ranking Member of the Readiness Subcommittee, issued a scathing statement following President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s unprecedented gathering of the military’s top commanders. Garamendi described the event as “wasteful, pointless, and blatantly partisan,” stressing that in all his years of public service, he had never witnessed such an unnecessary display. He underscored that meetings of this scale, bringing together the nation’s most senior military leaders from across the globe, are almost unheard of and typically only convened under extraordinary circumstances tied to national security.