Waltz: US not ‘exporting enrichment capability to the Saudis’ under nuclear deal
Source: The Hill News · Bias: Center
Summary
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said Sunday the U.S. will not be “exporting enrichment capacity to” Saudi Arabia under the new nuclear deal announced last week. Waltz appeared on the Sunday morning shows to clarify aspects of the deal, which would eventually allow the Saudis to enrich uranium, raising fears the Persian…
Waltz: US not ‘exporting enrichment capability to the Saudis’ under nuclear deal
Center
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said Sunday the U.S. will not be “exporting enrichment capacity to” Saudi Arabia under the new nuclear deal announced last week. Waltz appeared on the Sunday morning shows to clarify aspects of the deal, which would eventually allow the Saudis to enrich uranium, raising fears the Persian…
President Donald Trump has politicized America’s intelligence-gathering operations to an unprecedented degree, and a former CIA analyst who worked for Trump’s NSC is now raising the alarm.“In 2025, I watched from inside the White House and at the CIA as the intelligence community came under assault: senior officers fired in public, clearances revoked for dissent, decade-old assessments denounced by the CIA director in the press,” Julia Curlee, a former CIA analyst and an NSC director for Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, wrote for Lawfare on Monday. “Earlier this month, the campaign reached the raw intelligence itself, as the White House declassified selected reporting to sustain election interference claims that the intelligence community’s own finished analysis would not support.”As one example of Trump’s politicizing intelligence, Curlee described how members of the CIA with expertise in Venezuela were fired when they did not back the administration’s position on taking over that country.“Twenty years later, days after taking office, the second Trump administration tasked the National Intelligence Council (NIC) to assess whether the Venezuelan regime had directed Tren de Aragua—a criminal gang—to invade the United States,” Curlee wrote. “The question, from Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller, matched nearly word for word the predicate for the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, last invoked in World War II to intern Japanese, German, and Italian nationals.”She added that she knows this firsthand because she tasked the Venezuela assessment.“I was the NSC’s acting senior director for intelligence programs across the transition—Biden’s last week, Trump’s first,” Curlee said. “I knew the NIC, the intelligence community’s most senior, most deliberate analytic body, would carefully weigh the evidence and reach a consensus position. How much rode on that judgment became clear when the administration carried out lethal strikes on alleged drug boats off Venezuela and, in January 2026, sent U.S. forces into Caracas to seize Nicolás Maduro himself.”She added, “The NIC did not give the answer the White House wanted, concluding that Tren de Aragua had not entered the country at Maduro’s direction, undercutting the administration’s case in court. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard denounced the finding, and her chief of staff, Joe Kent, pressed the acting NIC chair to “rethink” it. When he held firm, Gabbard had him walked out of the building, ending the career of one of the country’s most accomplished analysts.”From there, Curlee lists other ways that Trump has pushed out people in the CIA and other intelligence agencies for engaging in work that the president disliked for purely political reasons.“From its first days, the second Trump administration treated the intelligence community not as an instrument of the state but as an enemy within: a ‘deep state’ that had allegedly lain in wait for the president during his first term,” Curlee wrote. “The aim was explicit: Put career civil servants ‘in trauma’ to make them not want to come to work. At the CIA, that program arrived on schedule.”She continued, “First they came for the people. On day one, the president revoked the clearances of 51 former officers who had spoken on Russian election interference. A month later, amid the purge of trans service members, the DNI fired 100 trans intelligence officers from 15 agencies. In May 2025, she fired two senior analysts over the Tren de Aragua assessment. And in August 2025, Gabbard publicly revoked 37 more clearances—including that of one of the intelligence community’s most respected experts on Russia—seemingly without irony, for the ‘politicization or weaponization of intelligence.’”Curlee said that Trump then denounced findings that had previously been proven beyond reasonable doubt, from Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election to warnings about white nationalist terrorism, violence against LGBT people and assessments about women’s reproductive health.“And the threat did not stop at termination,” Curlee pointed out. “Former CIA Director John Brennan was referred for criminal investigation and interviewed by the FBI over the same analysis the administration had set out to discredit. The lesson reached every desk—a clearance, and with it a livelihood, could be revoked with a phone call; a career could end in front of a grand jury. By mid-2026, the president was describing intelligence that contradicted his preferred reality as ‘treason.’”Curlee also warned about Trump politicizing intelligence during his July 16th speech falsely claiming that China had meddled in the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Biden.“The president delivered a primetime address alleging that China had interfered in the 2020 election, built on a mass declassification of election-related intelligence assembled by the White House’s Government Transparency Task Force—a body created to comb the classified...
Over the course of his war with Iran, President Donald Trump has made inflammatory remarks that many have suggested implied his intention to use nuclear weapons. Now a whistleblower from his first term warns that he “watched Donald Trump talk about nuclear weapons like they were presidential toys,” and that “he may be closer to playing with them than you think.”This is according to Miles Taylor, who served as deputy chief of staff at the Department of National Security during Trump’s first administration, at the time famously penning an anonymous article revealing the existence of a resistance movement working within the White House. On Monday, he published a new piece explaining why Trump has a “fixation” with using nuclear weapons. “Last week,” writes Taylor, “the president told Axios he was ‘close’ to ordering a ‘massive attack’ on Iran … The threat had the same ominous feel of his April comments that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight.’ It was an insinuation that he possessed super powers — and might break the world’s nuclear taboo to end the stalemate.” The pause didn’t mean the war was off, however, and Trump told Axios why he thought the war had to continue: “They haven’t received enough pain yet.” “Not enough pain,” notes Taylor. “I’ve heard rhetoric like that from him before. And it wasn’t about Iran.”“Back in 2017,” Taylor explains, “Trump judged that the only way to bring North Korea to heel was to make it suffer. He tweeted furiously at ‘Rocketman’ Kim Jong-un and promised ‘fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before’ if the hermit kingdom didn’t meet his demands. That was Trump’s first wink-nod to the fact that he possessed an arsenal of nuclear bombs and was ready to use them. Kim answered by threatening to fire missiles at Guam and testing a nuclear-capable missile that could strike the U.S. mainland.”Taylor says the situation escalated so rapidly that Defense Secretary James Mattis began preparing DHS officials for an all-out nuclear war. “For the first time in the Department of Homeland Security’s history, we ran exercises for a potential real-life nuclear strike on American soil, because frankly, we couldn’t rule out that our own president might take us into such an apocalyptic situation.”According to Taylor, the president’s motivation was simple: “Trump wanted to see something blow up, and the rest of us built contingency plans around that desire. Thankfully, he didn’t launch nukes at North Korea. But General Mattis also isn’t at the Pentagon anymore. ‘Pistol Pete’ Hegseth is.”Taylor asserts that “Trump’s nuclear fantasies go way back. When he was a candidate in 2016, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said a foreign policy adviser had come away from a briefing with Trump rattled, because Trump asked, three separate times, some version of the question: ‘If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them?’ Candidate Trump also told The New York Times he wasn’t sure it ‘would be a bad thing for us’ if Japan built its own nuclear deterrent against North Korea, and he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Saudi Arabia should have nukes, too, ‘absolutely.’” And “since then, Trump has toyed with nuclear weapons more openly and more recklessly than any American president ever entrusted with the stewardship of the bomb.”Now, amid an “unresolved war with Iran,” warns Taylor, “you get the picture of a president who’s just one mood swing away from putting his finger on the proverbial red button.”Taylor says that Trump’s motivation is not difficult to grasp, writing, “Donald Trump has spent his entire presidency on a power quest, always hunting for the next most powerful thing he can do. And nuclear weapons are at the top of that list. To say that he’s ‘toying’ with extreme powers is probably the wrong phraseology. He’s addicted to power. Very much like it’s an intoxicant. When his own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told The Atlantic that her boss had an ‘alcoholic’s personality,’ it wasn’t a mere slip of the tongue. That’s how everyone who’s served the man has come to see him … He has an uncontrollable, pathological, junkie-like urge to power.”“If deploying troops to seize foreign leaders and raining missiles on other nations isn’t cutting it anymore,” Taylor concludes. “I worry about where the quest leads next. I’ve written before about how close Trump got to using the bomb the first time. Let’s not forget what Trump reportedly absconded with after he left the presidency: U.S. nuclear secrets. Back in office, the fixation has returned.”
U.S. officials have claimed that the Iranian regime is seeking a deal to end the war, but an Iranian spokesperson has refuted these claims. These back-and-forth claims […]
Talks to establish a full cease-fire between the US and Iran made "significant" progress on Monday, mediators said — with President Trump optimistic but warning that war could reignite if the negotiations fail.
President Donald Trump warned Iranian negotiators Monday that time was running out to reach a negotiated settlement to end the war, warning that unless a deal was reached soon, the United States would “go back to very strong military action,” Axios’ Barak Ravid claimed.“We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don't work out, we will go back to very strong military action,” Trump said in a phone call, Ravid claimed.When asked how much time he was “willing to give diplomacy,” Trump reportedly told Ravid “not much time,” and that for negotiations, “either it goes fast or not at all.”The U.S.-Iran tentative peace deal reached in June has since crumbled as the United States ramped up attacks on the Middle East nation earlier this month. A brief pause in the fighting began on Saturday, however, with reports suggesting the Trump administration was motivated to temporarily halt its strikes due to dwindling stockpiles of interceptors.Last week, Trump told Axios that he was ready to order a “massive attack” on Iran, though his inner circle almost unanimously believes such an attack to be a “terrible f------ idea,” Zeteo reported Monday.🚨Trump told me: "We are in very deep talks with Iran. If they don't work out, we will go back to very strong military action"🚨Asked how long he's willing to give diplomacy, the president said: "Not much time. Either it goes fast or not at all" https://t.co/buEhUcTI8D— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) July 27, 2026
White House officials and insiders are growing increasingly worried that President Donald Trump may soon move forward with an idea they fear could “plunge the U.S. and global economy off a steep cliff,” Zeteo reported Sunday, and one that could be executed “as soon as within the coming days.”Trump’s idea, as he told Axios last week, was to stage a “massive attack” on Iran and reignite the conflict in a bid to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table on terms more favorable to Washington. However, “practically everyone in Trump’s inner circle” believes Trump’s plan is doomed to fail, Zeteo reported after speaking with multiple White House insiders.“Terrible f------ idea,” one White House adviser told Zeteo regarding their thoughts on Trump’s plan, speaking on the condition of anonymity.“Trump has no f------ way out,” a senior administration official told Zeteo, also speaking on the condition of anonymity.A third White House official, also speaking anonymously, told Zeteo there was "almost no scenario where Americans don't die" if Trump moves forward. And yet, despite the apparent consensus among Trump’s inner circle that further escalation would be unwise, one major "problem” persisted.“[The vast majority of Trump’s most senior advisers are] too scared to just say it to the president,” a U.S. official told Zeteo, also under the condition of anonymity. “No one is just telling Trump this won’t work… They soft-sell it or tone it down when they talk to the president about this, when what they all should be doing is telling him that none of this is going to work and it will destroy everything he’s worked for.”The White House insiders’ fears were further supported by recent reporting from The New York Times about a secret meeting on Friday between Trump and his top advisers, during which the majority of those close to Trump advised against intensifying attacks on Iran.
President Trump said on Monday that he agreed to halt the strikes against Iran, which had been ongoing for 13 consecutive days until Friday, to give negotiations with Iran another chance. US forces on Thursday completed a 13th consecutive night of attacks against Iranian military capabilities in and around the Strait of Hormuz since the fighting resumed earlier this month.
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