Trump’s Saudi Nuclear Agreement May Prolong the Iran War

Trump is giving the Saudis what he says Iran cannot have

by Trita Parsi | Sep 4, 2026 

Reprinted with permission from Trita Parsi’s Substack.

A final deal between the United States and Iran is slipping further out of reach. Since the Memorandum of Understanding collapsed in July, the prospects for reviving it have deteriorated by the day. While Tehran publicly demands a return to the MOU, Trump’s current position is that even if Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz, he would neither return to the agreement nor lift the blockade on Iran. And even in the unlikely event that he did, the MOU could not come back into force as long as Israel continues to bombard Lebanon. Iran is unlikely to accept an MOU minus Lebanon: its demand for a regional ceasefire is non-negotiable.

But even if these obstacles were resolved, profound differences over the nuclear issue would remain. And those differences have now grown dramatically more severe because of Trump’s nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia. The details of the deal were just made public, and Kelsey Davenport at the Arms Control Association has published an excellent FAQ addressing its most important aspects.

The bottom line is: Trump is granting Saudi Arabia access to the same uranium-enrichment technology the United States has sought to deny Iran for more than three decades, while imposing a far weaker inspection regime on Saudi nuclear activities. In effect, Washington is providing Riyadh a pathway to the bomb while insisting that Iran have no enrichment capability whatsoever – the infamous zero-enrichment objective.

As ACA writes,

“the Trump administration rejected key nonproliferation conditions for U.S. nuclear cooperation that have long-standing bipartisan support and are internationally recognized best practices.

Most critically, the deal does not require Saudi Arabia to adhere to the more intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards agreement, known as the Additional Protocol.”

As a point of comparison, Iran began voluntarily implementing the Additional Protocol (AP) under Obama’s nuclear deal in 2016 and was expected to ratify it once the United States formally lifted sanctions through Congress. That never happened, however, because Trump withdrew from the agreement in May 2018.

Moreover, Trump’s agreement with Saudi Arabia gives the kingdom a pathway to develop a uranium-enrichment program reaching 20 percent. Again, the comparison with Iran is revealing. When Iran expanded its enrichment to 20 percent in 2010 to produce fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor – which, ironically, the United States had given Iran in the late 1960s as part of the Atoms for Peace program – Washington pointed to the move as further evidence of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions.

State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley said on February 11, 2010, that Iran’s decision to begin enriching to 20 percent “further solidifies… our impression and that of the international community that Iran’s nuclear intentions are anything but peaceful.” At the UN Security Council, then-Ambassador Susan Rice argued that Iran’s decision moved it “closer to weapons-grade material,” as she made the case for new UN sanctions against Tehran.

Now, Trump wants Congress to approve a deal with Saudi Arabia that gives the kingdom access to precisely that technology – but with far fewer inspections – while bombing Iran to prevent it from having any enrichment at all.

The double standard could hardly be more stark: enrichment is intolerable in Iranian hands, yet acceptable – in fact, even worth giving to Riyadh – when in Saudi hands.

This will undoubtedly complicate matters with Tehran. Will Iran still agree to some of the terms discussed before the war and in the run-up to the MOU?

According to Oman’s Foreign Minister, who mediated the draft agreement in February 2026 that Trump rejected in favor of war, Iran had agreed to a needs-based enrichment arrangement that, in practice, would have created a five-to-seven-year pause in enrichment – well beyond Trump’s term in office. In later discussions, Iran hinted that it was open to extending it for another three to five years.

It is very important to understand that if the conflicts over the Strait and Lebanon are resolved and a genuine opportunity to revive the MOU emerges, these understandings will nevertheless unravel unless a nuclear agreement is reached at the end of the MOU’s 60-day period.

And that nuclear agreement looks all the more difficult to achieve given the blatant discrepancy between what the US demands of Iran and what it gifts Saudi Arabia. And if there is no nuclear deal at the end of the MOU, war will likely erupt again.

As such, Trump’s controversial Saudi deal may just have made an end to the war with Iran more unlikely.

Trita Parsi is the Executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and an award-winning author. Washingtonian Magazine has named him one of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy. Noam Chomsky calls him “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran”

Visit Trita Parsi’s Substack and subscribe.

Twilight’s Last Gleaming

by Andrew P. Napolitano | Sep 4, 2026 | 

There is a point in the decline of republics when the problem is no longer that government breaks its own laws. Governments will always behave unlawfully. The deeper problem comes when the constitutional machinery designed to prevent those acts stops functioning — when spending becomes detached from arithmetic, presidential power becomes detached from law, and Congress and the courts become detached from the Constitution.

That’s where America is today.

The fiscal warning could hardly be clearer. The government’s debt has now passed $40 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2026, with annual deficits rising to $3.1 trillion by 2036.

Worse, borrowing itself is becoming more expensive. Ten-year Treasury yields recently reached 4.6% and 30-year yields 5.2%, as investors demand greater compensation for lending money to Washington. The July 2026 deficit alone reached $432 billion.

The uniparty government in the past 110 years has produced a vicious circle: It spends more than it collects, borrows the difference, pays interest on the borrowing and borrows still more to pay the interest. Eventually, arithmetic becomes destiny.

But fiscal insolvency is only half the story. What is more frightening is the simultaneous deterioration of constitutional norms.

The president increasingly acts as though his personality is the source of his legal authority.

The United States has gone to war without the congressional authorization that the Constitution was designed to require. And the U.S. has attacked speedboats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, with more than 220 people murdered and no legal basis for killing and dispensing with due process.

In January, the United States military killed 47 persons in Venezuela during its violent kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Whatever one’s opinion of Maduro, the fundamental question remains: By what constitutional authority does an American president decide that a foreign head of state may be violently seized by the United States? None.

This is not a defense of Maduro. It is a defense of the principle that American presidents do not possess a roving commission to decide whom the United States may depose, kidnap or kill.

The distinction matters because constitutional government is supposed to stand between political power and its targets. The president is supposed to enforce the law, not create it. Congress is supposed to write the laws, not ignore them. The courts are supposed to enforce the Constitution, not evade it.

Yet Congress increasingly behaves as though presidential power is someone else’s problem.

Members of Congress complain loudly when the other party occupies the White House and become remarkably accommodating when their own party holds it. The result is an informal bipartisan transfer of power from the legislative to the executive. Every president inherits the precedents accumulated by his predecessor and then adds a few of his own. The next president inherits those precedents and stretches them further.

Eventually, there are no meaningful limits.

The same disease infects the courts. Judicial review remains theoretically formidable, but judicial intervention often comes after the government has already exercised power unconstitutionally. A constitutional right that can be violated first and litigated later is a fragile right. The person who has been silenced, imprisoned, deported, injured or killed cannot be restored to his previous condition merely because a court eventually announces that the government acted unlawfully and awards damages. Nor can a half-built, never-congressionally-authorized, $1 billion ballroom-for-billionaires be feasibly demolished.

The central question should be: What are the government’s legal authorities and what are their limits?

Instead that question has become: What can the president get away with?

A free people should not have to depend upon the temperament of the person occupying the Oval Office. The Constitution was designed precisely because the founders understood that limited government cannot depend upon a few good people. They assumed that presidents would sometimes be venal and unscrupulous, Congress sometimes pliant and cowardly, and judges sometimes wrong. So they constructed competing institutions, with divided authorities and checks and balances, making governing difficult.

That difficulty was intentional.

A government that can spend without limit, wage war without Congress, kill without trial, kidnap without consequence and employ overwhelming force without due process is a government behaving outside the Constitution.

And the financial numbers make the constitutional deterioration even more ominous. A government approaching $40 trillion in debt cannot endlessly promise every constituency that someone else will pay.

This is how great powers decline — not necessarily with a dramatic explosion, but through accumulated exemptions, exceptions and evasions.

The president says the Constitution permits whatever he wants to do because the national security demands it. Congress permits the president to do what he wants because confronting him is politically inconvenient. The courts intervene only after it is too late to undo the damage and strain at a gnat to avoid hard decisions. The Treasury borrows another trillion dollars because balancing the books would be a nightmare.

The public becomes accustomed to extraordinary government power because yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s precedent.

Then, one morning, people wake up and discover that the constitutional republic they inherited exists mostly on paper.

But the night before this realization — at twilight’s last gleaming — the nation that once possessed protections for personal freedoms, opportunities for wealth, and a unique cultural environment sees its former fidelity to the first principles that made those things possible slipping away.

A republic survives only when the passionate among us light brushfires of freedom by insisting that the U.S. stays out of other countries’ business, presidents obey the law, Congresses exercise constitutional powers, courts enforce constitutional limits, war is a last resort, and governments acknowledge that borrowed money is not free money.

The alternative is gradual normalization of unlimited debt, unlimited executive discretion and unlimited rationalizations.

The twilight of our constitutional republic has not arrived because the sun suddenly disappeared. It has arrived because, little by little, nearly everyone became accustomed to the darkness.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO – DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

Britain Faces a North Sea Crossroads as Jackdaw and Rosebank Await Approval

By City A.M - Sep 04, 2026

• INEOS Energy chairman Brian Gilvary argues that unstable taxation, limits on new exploration, and regulatory uncertainty have hurt UK North Sea oil and gas investment.
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• Rising decommissioning costs are consuming an increasing share of North Sea expenditure and could soon exceed capital investment.
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• Approval of Jackdaw and Rosebank is presented as an important first step, but Gilvary says that broader fiscal and licensing reforms are necessary to revive investment.
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The impending decision by the UK government over whether to approve the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields will mark a pivotal moment in the history and future of the North Sea. Almost £11bn of private investment waits in the wings, and the outcome of this decision will be a marker of whether Britain can regain its reputation as a serious place to invest in energy.

Approval would send a positive signal, but the issue is far bigger than two projects. Years of policy instability under consecutive governments, restrictions on new drilling and the Energy Profits Levy (EPL) have made it extremely challenging to make a business case for investment, causing capital to dry up.

Accelerating the closure of the UK North Sea does nothing to reduce global emissions. Demand for oil and gas remains, meaning production and carbon emissions are simply exported, starving the UK of valuable jobs, investment and tax revenues. This is damaging our energy security and long-term national wealth.

Let’s call this what it is. This is not managed decline; it is ideological destruction of a national resource owned by the country in the name of net zero.

The decommissioning paradox

Approving Jackdaw and Rosebank will not undo years of damage on its own.

By telling investors for years that the UK North Sea is not a reliable place to deploy capital, operators have voted with their feet, closing fields and redirecting investment. Last month, BP was the latest in a long list of operators to announce that it would be shutting up shop and directing investment elsewhere by announcing that it was marketing its UK North Sea oil and gas business. 

Ironically, much of this investment has been channelled into the very same basin but under a different flag. Norway is now investing roughly 10 times more than the UK in its own continental shelf, and it is even exporting some of that gas back to UK shores.

When investment disappears, fields close earlier and decommissioning is brought forward. The North Sea Transition Authority recently revealed that almost a quarter of all spending in the basin over the next five years will go towards shutting infrastructure down, not building it up. Staggeringly, from 2029 decommissioning spending will overtake capital investment. 

The acceleration of the decline of the North Sea has another important and often overlooked consequence for the Treasury. Companies can offset a significant proportion of decommissioning costs against tax. Premature closures therefore do not simply switch off future tax receipts; they bring the bill forward. 

Current estimates suggest that the combined impact of decommissioning tax relief and lost tax revenues could approach £13bn by 2035. At a time when public finances are already under pressure, accelerating that liability amounts to economic self-harm.

What does stability look like?

Oil and gas will remain part of Britain’s energy mix for years to come. The question is not whether we use these resources; it is whether we produce them ourselves or pay other countries to do it for us.

A decision to allow Jackdaw and Rosebank to proceed would send an important signal about the direction this country will take. However, a green light for both fields alone is not enough. Beyond this, we need a more stable fiscal regime that gives operators the certainty they need to invest, the removal of government restrictions on new drilling, and reform to the EPL. 

The government now has a choice. Responsibly manage a critical natural resource and pillar of the UK’s energy security while protecting jobs and tax revenues. Or accelerate its decline, exporting emissions and increasing imports at a time of global instability, leaving a gaping hole in the Treasury’s pocket.

By Brian Gilvary, chairman of INEOS Energy, via CityAM

Iran Says It's Found Ways to Dodge U.S. Oil Blockade

By Charles Kennedy - Sep 04, 2026

Iran pursues various tactics to bypass the U.S. blockade, which President Trump reimposed in the middle of July after the deal to make a deal collapsed, according to Iranian Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad.

“The oil industry has not sat idle and has not stopped,” Iranian media quoted the minister as saying.

“We are pursuing various solutions and different measures so that we can reach a day when we are able to completely bypass this blockade,” Paknejad added.

Iran managed to move a lot of oil out of the Persian Gulf during the brief three-week period in which the U.S. blockade was lifted between mid-June and mid-July, the minister said.

Iran also claims it pursues efforts to boost oil and associated gas production despite the war and the U.S. strikes.

Vessel-tracking services have estimated that Iran's oil exports plunged in August from a year earlier after the U.S. reinstated the blockade in the middle of July.

Iran managed to load around 260,000 barrels per day (bpd) for export at its ports in August, an 80% slump compared to 1.7 million bpd loaded in August 2025, per data from trade intelligence firm Kpler cited by CNBC.

The August loadings were also more than halved compared to about 740,000 bpd in July 2026.

Kpler and other ship-tracking services, including Vortexa and TankerTrackers.com say the reinstated blockade has been very effective in crippling Iranian oil exports and oil revenues.

TankerTrackers.com this week said that its estimates showed that Iran's oil exports plunged by 100% in August 2026 compared to the immediate pre-war baseline of January and February 2026.

The U.S. is attempting to inflict maximum economic damage to Iran with the blockade and the ‘Economic D-Day’ announced last week.

China, Iran's top and almost only oil buyer, has signaled it would not end its ties and trade relations with Iran following the U.S. sanctions that target Chinese and Hong Kong entities for helping Iran do business.

“China will do everything necessary to firmly safeguard its rights and interests,” Lin Jian, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a regular press conference after the U.S. launched “Operation Economic Outcast” against Iran.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

India Plans Mandatory Battery Storage at Solar and Wind Projects

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Sep 04, 2026

India’s authorities plan to introduce, from July 1, 2027 a regulation requiring developers of solar and wind energy projects to have battery storage installed at the sites in a bid to better manage the renewable energy output and reduce curtailments.

For solar and wind projects commissioned after July 1, 2027, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) of India proposes that developers to be mandated to have co-located energy storage equal to at least 10% of the renewable project’s installed capacity, with a minimum duration of two hours.

The proposed regulation would become more stringent for projects commissioned between July 2029 and 2031, with battery storage of at least 10% of installed capacity and a minimum duration of four hours, according to the draft proposals.

Despite a major solar and wind installations boom in recent years, India has been struggling to fully utilize the capacities because output has often been curtailed due to the lack of battery storage.

As a result, solar power developers in India have started to add battery storage to photovoltaic projects to attract buyers and reduce the large share of curtailments for power supply that the grids are unable to absorb, Santosh Sarangi, Secretary of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said last month.

Without battery backup, solar projects see curtailments during the hottest months and peak daytime hours.

India's electricity grid is expanding at a slower pace than the boom in renewable energy installations, leading to an increased share of clean energy curtailments and threatening to slow the solar and wind boom in the world’s most populous country.

Grid and transmission constraints accounted for nearly two-thirds of all renewable energy curtailment at 300 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in the first quarter of the year, clean energy think tank Ember said in a report in May.

In a separate analysis in June, Ember said that India needs around 10 GWh of battery storage immediately to stop renewable energy curtailment when the coal fleet cannot ramp down below its technical minimum.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Ukraine Pushes U.S. Congress for Russia Sanctions Before Election Recess

By RFE/RL staff - Sep 04, 2026

• The Senate overwhelmingly approved the Russia and Iran sanctions legislation 86-11 on August 7, but its path through the House remains uncertain.
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• Ukraine says tougher tariffs on major buyers of Russian energy could significantly reduce Moscow’s ability to finance its war.
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• House Democrats support stronger pressure on Russia but object to giving President Trump broad tariff and sanctions-waiver authority.
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Ukraine’s top sanctions official says he remains optimistic about prospects for a sweeping Russia sanctions bill in the US Congress despite growing uncertainty over when the House of Representatives will take it up, as lawmakers face a sharply shortened legislative calendar ahead of the November elections.

Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s sanctions commissioner, spent this week in Washington meeting lawmakers and congressional staff as Kyiv presses Congress to advance the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026.

The legislation passed the Senate on August 7 by an overwhelming 86-11 vote, reflecting rare bipartisan agreement. The bill would give the president additional authority to impose punitive tariffs on countries that continue buying Russian fossil fuels. It also includes provisions targeting Iran, which Vlasiuk said is engaged in close military-industrial cooperation with Moscow.

But the measure faces a more complicated path in the House, where some Democrats have expressed reservations about provisions that would give President Donald Trump additional authority to impose tariffs.

Republican leaders announced on September 3 that the final two weeks of the pre-election House session are canceled, severely curtailing what had been a full legislative calendar for September.

House members are expected to leave Washington no later than September 17 and not return until mid-November. The House will reconvene for one additional week of business after next week’s Labor Day break.

The compressed calendar has increased pressure on supporters of the sanctions legislation. Senior Republican aides told RFE/RL that the bill remains a GOP priority, provided Democrats “get their ducks in a row.”

Democratic aides, in response to RFE/RL inquiries, expressed cautious optimism about the measure, underscoring uncertainty over whether Speaker Mike Johnson will bring it to the floor.

Vlasiuk: ‘Good Chance’

Vlasiuk said he held roughly 20 meetings with lawmakers and congressional staff during his Washington visit, including discussions with members of both parties.

He said the Ukrainian delegation encountered broad support for increasing pressure on Russia and that no lawmaker told him outright that they would oppose the legislation.

“Everyone agreed that it was necessary to increase pressure on Russia,” Vlasiuk said at a briefing at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington. “No one said that he definitely would not support this bill.”

He described Ukraine as “quite optimistic” about the level of support for the legislation, including among Democrats.

One potentially important route would be for the House to consider the bill under suspension of the rules, a fast-track procedure generally used for legislation expected to command broad support. Vlasiuk said that was among the realistic scenarios for moving the bill forward.

“I think that there is really good chance that this bill will be brought onto the floor,” he said.

Vlasiuk has previously identified the week after next as Kyiv’s preferred window for a House vote. With the House calendar now compressed, that period could provide one of the last opportunities for a vote before lawmakers leave Washington.

Asked by RFE/RL whether the momentum surrounding the bill was still there, Vlasiuk pointed to what he characterized as continued bipartisan backing for Ukraine.

“There is a lot of support for Ukraine on the Hill,” he said, adding that Kyiv has been “very vocal” in stressing the urgency of passing the bill. “At the same time, well, I mean, let’s wait and see,” Vlasiuk said.

Democrats Wary Of Trump Powers

The principal obstacle is not broad disagreement over confronting Russia, according to Thomas Melia, a former senior State Department official and Senate Foreign Relations Committee deputy staff director who is currently with the Free Russia Foundation.

In an interview with RFE/RL, Melia explained that Democratic leaders have several reasons for hesitating. One is that the legislation is not strictly necessary for the administration to impose sanctions, he said. Trump already possesses significant authority to sanction Russian individuals and entities.

The bill’s principal value, in Melia’s assessment, is therefore partly political and symbolic: Its bipartisan backing would demonstrate congressional resolve to increase pressure on Moscow.

But Melia said the House Democratic leadership was not sufficiently involved in negotiating the version that ultimately emerged from the Senate.

That concern is particularly relevant to Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who has expressed general support for tougher pressure on Russia but has raised concerns about provisions of the legislation.

There is also a substantive concern: The final version of the legislation gives the president additional tariff authority. Melia said that has created hesitation among Democrats who are wary of giving Trump another instrument that could be used broadly against US trading partners.

Melia also emphasized another change from the bill’s earlier form: The final version makes the sanctions optional rather than mandatory.

That distinction matters, he said, because the original legislation’s political force came in part from its mandatory sanctions provisions and overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate.

After the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, the administration backed a version of the legislation but sought changes that made sanctions nonmandatory and added tariff authority, Melia said.

The result, in his view, is a weaker measure than the original. Melia said the final version nevertheless retains substantial political significance because of the broad bipartisan support that surrounded the tougher proposal.

Kyiv Backs Tariffs

Vlasiuk defended the tariff provisions, arguing that they could make sanctions substantially more effective. “This is a powerful instrument which will allow to amplify the effect of the sanctions,” he said.

He argued that tariffs and sanctions can have similar economic effects but differ in their ability to be circumvented.

“Sanctions can be adapted, sanctions can be evaded, tariffs cannot be adapted or evaded,” Vlasiuk said.

He also rejected concerns that countries could be arbitrarily targeted under the bill, saying the legislation establishes criteria based on purchases of Russian fossil fuels.

In particular, he pointed to China and India, which Ukraine considers central to Russia’s continued ability to sell its energy exports.

Vlasiuk said the pressure could represent “a huge blow” to Russia’s ability to finance its war against Ukraine.

Ukraine also supports the bill’s inclusion of Iran, he said, citing Tehran’s close military cooperation with Moscow.

“Everyone understands how close cooperation is between the military-industrial complex of these countries,” Vlasiuk said. “Therefore, Iran is very well-deserved.”

House Vote Window Narrows

The political stakes are heightened by the House’s decision to cancel its final two weeks of pre-election legislative work.

The chamber is expected to depart Washington no later than September 17, although Republican leaders have said members could be recalled if the Senate advances a party-line budget reconciliation package. That scenario is not currently expected.

Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican who has supported the sanctions effort, described the lack of congressional action as a serious failure.

“This is a real shame. It passed 86-11 in the Senate,” Bacon said. “Congressional inaction on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and on Putin’s crimes is a real failure. The history books will not be kind.”

For Kyiv, the urgency is not simply legislative.

Vlasiuk warned that Ukraine faces another difficult winter after months of Russian missile and drone attacks. He said 160 people had been killed in missile and drone strikes in recent months.

“We have to increase the pressure over Russia to make them change their plans, to make them really negotiate,” he said.

He argued that passing the sanctions bill now would have two effects: It could eventually increase economic pressure on Russia, while immediately sending a political signal to both Ukraine and the Russian government.

There is, he said, an element of inertia in sanctions policy. Even after legislation passes, implementing measures can take days, and producing a significant effect on Russia’s economy can take weeks.

“But at the same time, the very fact of passing this sanction bill,” Vlasiuk said, would send a “strong signal of support to Ukrainian people” and a “really strong signal to Russian government.”

By RFE/RL