Transcript of Saudi Uranium Enrichment Deal, Trump Defends Iran War, GOP Congress Out Of Sync

President Trump went to war with Iran to stop it from enriching uranium.

Now he's signed a deal that could let Saudi Arabia do just that. Will the deal spark a Middle East nuclear arms race?

I'm Michelle Martin. That's A. Martinez. And this is Up First from NPR News. President Trump is threatening to bomb bridges and power plants in Iran and is telling his supporters the war is a win. He says military action in Iran will pay for itself, the way he claims it did in Venezuela. But with gas prices up again, are MAGA voters losing patience?

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Instead of scrolling mindlessly, engage mindfully with the NPR app. With a mix of on-demand news stories from this station and your favorite podcasts, you can relax without shutting off your brain. Download the NPR app today. The U.S. has agreed to build and run nuclear energy plants in Saudi Arabia.

The Gulf state is rich in oil, but it's been trying to pivot to other energy sources. And while Saudi Arabia's crown prince has said the kingdom does not want nuclear weapons, he has also said Riyadh will pursue one if Iran develops a nuclear weapon first.

With us now is NPR's Emily Feng in Tel Aviv. Emily, so this agreement— first, tell us what's in it and actually, too, what's not.

So it would allow American companies to run commercial nuclear power plants on Saudi soil for decades to come. And under the agreement, Saudi Arabia is not permitted to reprocess American nuclear material for weapons. But there is nothing in this agreement and a security protocol attached that stops the kingdom from using these plants to, say, enrich uranium or other nuclear fuel that's provided by other countries, something that the US made the United Arab Emirates, another Gulf country, promise not to do in a previous energy deal back in 2009. So this agreement is sending shockwaves through the Middle East and especially in Israel, where I am right now, because Saudi Arabia has been angling for nuclear cooperation with the US. For at least a decade. And there had been questions about the kingdom's human rights abuses, including from then-Senator and now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and also Saudi Arabia's possible aspirations for a nuclear weapon. And all that stalled energy cooperation until now. Now, the US Energy Department argues this deal expands American technology exports, and the agreement does tie the US and Saudi Arabia closer together at a time when Gulf states, including the Kingdom of Saud, have really paid a price for aligning with the US because they are still getting hit hard by Iranian drone and artillery strikes in a war with Iran that the US started.

And they're also dealing with the resulting economic shock because Saudi Arabia has seen its ability to export oil curtailed.

Now, although Israel has never confirmed this, it's widely believed Israel has nuclear weapons already. Considering that you were there and you said that it has sent shockwaves through Israel, what's been the reaction there?

Israel is alarmed, to say the least. Former Defense Minister and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman here criticized this agreement on the public broadcaster yesterday. Saying here that it risks pulling the entire Middle East into an escalating nuclear arms race. Now, this nuclear energy agreement is also deepening worries here in Israel, which is a major American ally that Trump, and therefore the US, are increasingly divergent from Israel. Ehud Barak, a former prime minister of Israel, told the army-run radio station this: He says it's a sign of the loss of trust between Netanyahu and Trump, the implication being that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has somehow messed up Israel's relationship with Trump.

Okay, now one more thing, Emily, considering that you're nearby, Iran, what's happening there?

U.S. Central Command said it began strikes on Iranian military and logistics sites for what has been almost 2 weeks running now. Iran says it targeted 3 U.S. bases in Kuwait, plus American military infrastructure in Jordan and Qatar. And President Trump is now saying he's aware of reports that Iran moved uranium enrichment centrifuges deep under a mountain, which he is warning the U.S. might hit soon.

All right, that's NPR's Emily Feng. Emily, thank you very much.

Thank you, Abe.

President Trump is once again ramping up aggression toward Iran, threatening to bomb Iranian bridges and power plants, including ones near the capital city Tehran. And he's rejecting the idea of making another deal with Iran.

Trump is selling the war as a success. He was in Marietta, Georgia yesterday.

Venezuela, Iran, America is back. It's stronger than ever before. And I'm telling you, it's only going one way. It's going up.

But support for Trump's actions abroad is going down, even among his own supporters.

NPR's Deepa Shivaram joins us now. So let's start with a new polling out from Politico that shows President Trump's own base is getting tired of the war.

Yeah, I mean, these polling numbers from July show some bad news for the president. The poll asked Trump's MAGA base, whether the U.S. should continue the war even if it increases costs. And just 37% said yes. And that number is down from 2 months before when the base was split on this 50/50. So there's a pretty significant decline here among the supporters who, keep in mind, back Trump staunchly. And of course, this is happening as costs continue to rise.

Right.

Gas prices are going up again. Inflation is up. And at the same time that Americans are struggling with these higher prices, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that the Iran The Afghan war so far has cost $37.5 billion. That's with a B, which is pretty big for a price tag for a war that Trump said would end months ago. And, you know, not to mention American troops who have been killed and injured in action as well.

How is the president addressing economic issues?

Yeah.

So Trump in his speech yesterday made one argument that I thought was kind of interesting. He was trying to set up almost a side-by-side comparison of the U.S.'s operations in Venezuela to Iran. So after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this this year, the U.S. started to control Venezuelan oil exports, and the Trump administration says that the U.S. is benefiting from this economically, though I will say there isn't much transparency around that. So Trump is saying that operations in Venezuela basically have paid for themselves, and he's sort of trying to convince Americans that Iran will be something like that, that it'll be worth it in the end. At the same time, though, he's also continuing to mock the idea that affordability is important. He's saying that he just inherited inflation and a bad economy from former President Biden. At the same time, he also did kind of ask for a bit of patience from voters and some, some time to try to lower costs.

Oil will be coming. It's going to be tumbling down. It was 3 weeks ago. They thought we had a deal. I said, I don't think we have a deal with these guys. They break every deal they make. But I said, you know, but people thought the geniuses on Wall Street, they came down, really down, and goes back up a little bit. But it's going to come down maybe lower than when we even started. But just give me a little time.

Yeah, and that's something that President Trump has been asking Americans to give him time for a while now.

Yeah.

His party, though, is starting to run out of time before the midterms. So is the president factoring that in at all?

You know, it seems like no. Earlier this week, the president himself said that the midterm elections weren't a part of his decision-making process on Iran. And it's putting members of his own party in a complicated position when addressing the president's economic agenda. And it's not just with Iran. For example, Trump has recently announced more tariffs on Canada, and that's left Republicans in states like Maine trying to distance themselves from the president's plans.

All right, that's NPR's Deepa Shivaram. Deepa, thank you very much.

Thank you.

The House is on its way out the door for a month-long break right after sending a few big pieces of legislation to the Senate, including some of President Trump's priorities.

The Senate is in Washington for one more week, and even though both chambers are controlled by Republicans, they've been struggling to coordinate recently.

NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel is in the studio to tell us more about this. So, Eric, House Republicans just passed a bunch of things as they prepared to go home. What did they take up?

Yeah, it's been a week. There were a handful of things. One, $1,100 billion for the Pentagon, a lot of money. Two, an extension of government funding through the midterms to December 4th, hopefully avoiding another shutdown. There were, of course, two record shutdowns so far this congressional term. And 3, new congressional stock trading rules tied also to an unrelated voter ID measure.

All right. So that's what the House did. When is the Senate going to vote on all of that?

I guess the short answer is they're not really going to take up these things as written. They'll all need to be rewritten before they can pass the Senate. So because of a procedural quirk known as the filibuster, legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes to pass the chamber. That means Democratic support is needed, too. So as Trump escalates the war in Iran, all without congressional authorization, as more American American troops die and things keep getting more expensive at home. Democrats oppose that annual Pentagon budget—this $1.1 trillion—that's usually bipartisan. For the government funding extension, Democrats want to see concessions on the president's immigration enforcement operations, like they have before. On stock trading, Democrats say it isn't enough just to prohibit lawmakers from buying new stocks, which this bill does. In fact, lawmakers should be forced to divest holdings they have when they're elected. They say that this bill has a loophole big enough to fly a Qatari jet through. Many Democrats also oppose the voter ID rules. But House Republicans also passed a fourth thing this week, a budget framework, which is in theory a setup for an eventual reconciliation bill in a few months that would contain more money for the president's war in Iran, for farmers, for his election overhaul bill.

And it's actually exempt from that 60-vote threshold. Republicans don't need Democrats at all to pass that. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he's holding off on passing it anyway. Okay, why? Well, Thune wants a government funding backup plan if he can't strike a deal with Senate Democrats on keeping the government open past the midterm elections. And so he might decide that he wants to transform this party-line reconciliation framework already passed by the House into a government funding bill. Not to mention, the bill has Trump's election overhaul wish list tacked on— the Save America Act, which, among other things, would ban mail-in voting across the country and require proof of citizenship before you can register to vote. I should say that probably doesn't qualify under the rules to pass with just a simple majority and has already failed in the Senate several times.

So this is something I don't understand, Eric, because Republicans control both chambers, the House and the Senate. So why aren't they on the same page when it comes to passing these bills?

Yeah, they might be in the same building, but they're also kind of in totally different worlds. Speaker Mike Johnson has percentage-wise a considerably smaller margin for error, maybe just a 2-vote majority at any given time depending on absences. He's got a large hard-right flank to deal with and a closer relationship than John Thune with President Trump. Senate leader John Thune has to keep more Democrats on board for legislation and deal with generally more free agent, free-spirited set of legislators, the kind that become U.S. senators. So they're juggling a pretty different set of circumstances as they try and keep the plates spinning.

So does that mean none of the bills become law?

I guess not anytime soon. The Senate will at least consider some of this before they leave town for recess next week, make their changes, and send whatever they can pass back to the House. Speaker Mike Johnson, for his part, will see if his members can stomach those changes after the long August recess, and they'll try again in the fall when you have me back. All right.

Perfect. Make it a date. That's NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel. Eric, thanks. Thank you. And that's Up First for Thursday, July 23rd. I'm Emilio Martinez. And I'm Michelle Martin.

Today's episode of Up First was edited by Tina Krya, Rebecca Metzler, Jason Breslow, Mohamed El Bardisi, and Adriana Gallardo. It was produced by Ziad Butch and Nia Dumas. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hynes. Our technical director is Stacy Abbott, and our deputy executive producer is Kelly Dickens. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

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