Lapid slams Dermer for suggesting Israel won’t oppose Saudi civil nuclear program

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid assails Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer for suggesting the government would not oppose Saudi Arabia’s development of a civil nuclear program in the context of a potential US-brokered normalization agreement between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

In an interview Friday with PBS, Dermer was asked whether Israel would support a Saudi nuclear program that includes uranium enrichment capabilities.

“Like so many things, the devil is in the details, and we’re going to have to look at what ultimately is agreed upon,” said Dermer, a close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “[The Saudis] could go to China or they can go to France tomorrow, and they could set up — ask them to set up a civil nuclear program and to allow for domestic enrichment.

“They could do that tomorrow if they wanted to. So the question that I asked myself is, if the US is involved in this, what will that mean 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, 30 years down the road, and what’s the alternative? There are other issues the Saudis have put forward,” he said.

Dermer added: “You have countries in the region that can have civilian nuclear power. That’s a different story than a nuclear weapons program.”

On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Lapid argues Dermer’s comments “endanger Israeli security.”

“It’s possible to reach an agreement that strengthens our national security without Israel having to sign off on uranium enrichment in the Middle East,” Lapid says.