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 United Nations has a structural absurdity problem, and it is no longer possible to dismiss it as an anomaly. Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, a country that executed 65 women in 2025 alone and enforces a system its own UN Special Rapporteur has called “gender apartheid” — now sits on UN bodies shaping policy on women’s rights, nuclear nonproliferation, and terrorism prevention. Rep. Brian Mast and the House Foreign Affairs Committee are not wrong to ask whether this is satire.