标签： Asia

Months of quiet, deliberate diplomacy between the United States and Saudi Arabia hit an unexpected cliff hours after the two countries signed a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation agreement last Wednesday, after former-turned-incumbent President Donald Trump unilaterally declared the entire deal depends on Riyadh normalizing ties with Israel via the Abraham Accords. This bombshell announcement contradicts what two U.S. officials familiar with the negotiations told Middle East Eye: for months of talks that began in November 2025, Saudi recognition of Israel was never raised as a requirement for the nuclear agreement.

“Normalization was never listed as a condition. Not once,” one source confirmed to MEE. The contradiction has thrown a once-celebrated bilateral deal into chaos, leaving officials in Washington, Riyadh and across the Middle East scrambling to clarify the agreement’s future.

Less than 24 hours after the nuclear 123 agreement was signed, Trump took to social media to assert that the deal was “totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords”. The surprise post caught U.S. and Arab officials off guard, even though Trump had spoken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman earlier that same day, and top diplomats from both nations had also held a bilateral call that Wednesday. Trump has long positioned the 2020 Abraham Accords—through which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized relations with Israel—as his signature foreign policy achievement, and has openly pushed Saudi Arabia to join the framework.

Trump’s unilateral declaration has reshaped the entire context of a deal that experts say could reorient the strategic balance of the Middle East. The core point of contention centers on a provision in the still-unreleased agreement: multiple U.S. media outlets report the deal establishes a joint U.S.-Saudi working group to study the economic viability of domestic uranium enrichment in Saudi Arabia, a long-held Saudi policy goal framed as a matter of national sovereignty and energy independence. While U.S. allies including Japan and Brazil have secured 123 agreements that allow domestic enrichment, the UAE’s 2009 deal bars the country from the practice.

Critics warn that permitting Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium could spark a regional nuclear arms race. If Riyadh moves forward with domestic enrichment, regional competitors including Turkey, the UAE and Qatar would likely pursue similar capabilities, they argue. Iran, which has defied international pressure to advance its own enrichment program amid years of regional conflict, would almost certainly harden its position, while Israel—the Middle East’s only undeclared nuclear-armed state—has made clear it opposes any shift that could erode its regional nuclear monopoly.

Prior to Trump’s post, the agreement was framed as the culmination of steadily warming U.S.-Saudi ties, a reward for Riyadh’s longstanding stance opposing U.S. military escalation against Iran. The U.S. Department of Energy framed the pair of nuclear agreements (the 123 deal and a separate safeguards pact) as a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances both economic interests and nonproliferation goals, opening major new market access for U.S. nuclear firms while supporting Saudi Arabia’s growing energy demand.

“These two agreements lay the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances several priority economic and strategic objectives, including nuclear nonproliferation,” the DOE said in its original statement. “The 123 agreement provides great access for American companies in the Saudi nuclear energy program, benefiting American industry, workers, and supply chains while helping to meet Saudi energy needs.”

Saudi Arabia has for its part consistently ruled out normalizing ties with Israel until the country commits to an irreversible path toward an independent Palestinian state. Saudi analysts note that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has made any normalization politically impossible for Riyadh at present. This stance has shaped the kingdom’s negotiating strategy throughout the process: Saudi diplomats prioritized separating the nuclear cooperation track from any Israeli normalization talks, working for months to convince Trump—an administration focused on bilateral economic wins, with family business ties in the Gulf—to move forward with the nuclear deal regardless of progress on normalization.

The groundwork for the deal was laid during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s November 2025 visit to the White House, where he received a formal state welcome even after he declined pressure from Trump to move forward with normalization. Wednesday’s signing was viewed as the successful conclusion of that months-long process.
“The decision to separate nuclear cooperation from the normalisation track reveals pragmatic American calculations,” said Hesham Alghannam, director general of strategic studies and national security programmes at Riyadh’s Naif Arab University, ahead of Trump’s announcement. “A thirty-year agreement that ties Riyadh to American nuclear supply chains would achieve a tangible commercial and strategic benefit for both countries. Everybody wins.”

In the aftermath of Trump’s post, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed to reporters Thursday that Trump had not spoken with the crown prince since releasing the statement, and sidestepped questions about whether the normalization condition had been privately agreed to in prior talks. “The president is always the final dealmaker,” Leavitt said. “If they don’t join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off.”

Middle East experts disagree on what comes next. Rosemary Kelanic, a Middle East analyst at the think tank Defense Priorities, noted that Trump’s social media post does not legally alter the agreement he already signed—but that he retains the power to scrap the deal entirely regardless. She added that permitting Saudi enrichment runs counter to U.S. national interests regardless of the Israel issue: “The US has no national interest, regardless of Israel, in allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium. There are a million ways for US companies to make money without the risk of nuclear proliferation.”

Other experts suggest Trump’s last-minute condition may be a strategic move to defuse opposition to the deal ahead of its mandatory congressional review. The agreement must be submitted to Congress, which can block it with a two-thirds majority, though Trump could override any rejection with a veto. Randa Slim, head of the Middle East programme at the Stimson Center, questioned whether the condition was added to win over skeptical lawmakers facing pressure from both the pro-Israel lobby and anti-Saudi advocacy groups.

“You have to wonder who interfered in this? Who asked Trump to put that condition in – the Israelis? Or is this a way to counter pushback from the Israeli lobby and anti-Saudi lobby,” Slim told MEE. The fate of the bilateral nuclear deal now hangs in the balance, as Saudi leaders weigh whether to accept an unexpected new condition that contradicts months of agreed-upon negotiation, and regional powers watch closely for shifts that could reshape the Middle East’s security and nuclear landscape.

NEW DELHI – After 26 days of refusing food, a hunger strike that became the catalyst for one of the largest grassroots protest movements India has seen in recent years, prominent Indian activist Sonam Wangchuk called off his fast on Friday. Even as Wangchuk ended his demonstration, the thousands of demonstrators who have gathered across the country made clear their campaign would not stop until the nation’s top education official steps down.

Wangchuk’s extended fast emerged as a unifying rallying cry for the “Cockroach Protests,” a youth-led movement that launched more than a month ago. What began as a focused outcry over systemic gaps exposed by widespread leaks in India’s most competitive college and public service entrance exams quickly expanded into a broader movement channeling widespread public frustration over entrenched unemployment, weak government accountability, and shrinking economic opportunity for young people. Today, the movement draws participation from a cross-section of Indian society, including working professionals, working-class families, and veteran activists, with major demonstrations held in the capital New Delhi and major metropolitan centers across the nation.

The sustained wave of dissent marks one of the most significant challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in recent years. Despite harsh police intervention earlier this week that saw officers deploy tear gas and baton charges to disperse thousands of marchers attempting to reach the national Parliament, protesters have continued to return to the streets in large numbers.

In a public post on the social platform X, Wangchuk explained that he ended his fast during a meeting with two federal cabinet ministers, following appeals from dozens of members of India’s parliament and “a long negotiation on various conditions.” He added that the decision also came “in view of possible violence across the country,” though he offered no further details about the content of the closed-door negotiations.

Movement organizers have rejected any tentative progress from talks, reaffirming that demonstrations will continue until Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigns from his post. They have also called for coordinated protests across all of India’s states this Friday to stand in solidarity with student demonstrators who were beaten by police during a massive, thousand-person march to Parliament this week Monday.

The movement’s unusual name carries a sharp political edge: it was coined by the Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical activist group that has led the campaign. The name references an offhand remark made by India’s chief justice of the Supreme Court, who compared unemployed young people to cockroaches. “We won’t let Sonam sir’s sacrifice go in vain,” said Abhijeet Dipke, the group’s founder.

The end of Wangchuk’s hunger strike comes just one day after Prime Minister Modi broke his weeks-long silence to address the protests for the first time. In his first public remarks on the unrest, Modi announced plans to establish fast-track special courts to speed up prosecutions of individuals connected to exam paper leak schemes. He also released a separate video message, confirming that his government would introduce new legislation in Parliament to impose harsher penalties for paper leak offenses.

But these policy announcements failed to ease protester anger, as movement leaders argue the measures do not go far enough to address core demands: comprehensive education reform, tangible improvements to government accountability, and financial compensation for the families of students who died by suicide in the wake of repeated exam leak scandals that have derailed thousands of young people’s career and education prospects.

The $1.5 trillion fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the must-pass annual legislation that funds all Pentagon operations, passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a razor-thin 216-212 vote this week – but its path forward in the Senate remains gridlocked, held up by intensifying backlash over a deeply divisive provision that would permanently codify deep military technology integration between the United States and Israel. The controversial measure, labeled Section 219 in the House version and Section 1217 in the separate Senate bill, would formally reorient the bilateral defense relationship, shifting Israel from its long-standing status as a top recipient of U.S. foreign military aid to a full, permanent partner in core U.S. defense development. Once enacted, future U.S. presidents would lack the authority to unilaterally withdraw from the integrated initiative, a detail that has amplified criticism from cross-partisan skeptics.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has framed the shift as a historic milestone for the bilateral alliance, but the provision has sparked fierce debate at a moment of already heightened tensions over U.S. entanglement in the ongoing, ferocious war between the U.S.-Israeli coalition and Iran, which has already claimed the lives of 18 U.S. service members and left more than 400 wounded.

The core of the policy, officially named the United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative, is unprecedented for U.S. alliances. While Washington has long maintained deep joint defense research and development partnerships with close allies including the United Kingdom and Australia, this provision would enshrine the integration in binding congressional mandate, embedding Israeli-origin and co-developed technologies directly into U.S. defense supply chains and exempting the partnership from annual congressional budget oversight. The initiative outlines collaboration across high-stakes defense sectors: counter-drone systems, missile and air defense, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and cyber and electronic warfare. It requires the U.S. Secretary of War to formalize integration across multiple key Pentagon bodies, including the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate, Defense Innovation Unit, Missile Defense Agency, and U.S. Space Command, with a formal progress report due to Congress within 12 months of enactment.

The House provision was first introduced by Texas Republican Congressman Ronny Jackson, former White House physician during Donald Trump’s first presidential term, who had his senior Navy rank restored by the Biden administration after it was stripped over allegations of sexual misconduct and alcohol-related infractions. In the Senate, the equivalent measure was introduced on a bipartisan basis by Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Republican Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina. Notably, the Senate version goes further than the House text: it explicitly requires ongoing consultation with the Israeli Minister of Defense on initiative coordination, a detail that critics argue erodes U.S. sovereign control over its own defense apparatus.

While much of the day-to-day collaboration outlined in the provision already occurs informally between the two countries, codifying the partnership into permanent law has sparked opposition from across the political spectrum. A bipartisan amendment led by Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna and Republican Congressman Thomas Massie to strip Section 219 from the House bill failed to pass last week, but it earned more than 100 Democratic votes – a clear signal of the growing ideological distance between progressive U.S. liberals and Israeli policy, mirroring rising frustration among liberal voters with unconditional U.S. support for Israel.

Massie, who is serving his final months in Congress after pro-Israel lobbying groups spent tens of millions of dollars to defeat him in Kentucky’s Republican primary earlier this year, took to social media platform X to denounce the provision as “a betrayal of our sovereignty.” Former National Counterterrorism Center head Joe Kent, who resigned in March just weeks after the February 28 start of the Iran war, echoed that criticism, arguing that the provision merges the most sensitive components of U.S. defense and intelligence infrastructure with a foreign government. Kent, who resigned over claims the Trump administration was pushed into the conflict by Israel, urged constituents to pressure Senate lawmakers to reject the NDAA until the provision is removed.

Colorado Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, a high-profile right-wing lawmaker, also highlighted constituent opposition, acknowledging she missed the House vote after hundreds of constituents reached out to oppose the provision – though she declined to support the Khanna-Massie amendment to remove it.

Former senior State Department official Josh Paul, who resigned in 2023 to protest the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and now co-leads the policy advocacy group A New Policy, told reporters the mandate is unnecessary and unprecedented. “If this was something that the U.S. government or U.S. industry wanted to do, it could already be doing it – there is no law against it,” Paul explained. “What you have here is essentially a political decision to require it, and to identify Israeli technologies to build into U.S. platforms. Those are both unique.”

Paul’s group has publicly urged lawmakers to reject the provision, arguing it poses multiple threats to U.S. national security. In a policy brief, the group noted the initiative exposes sensitive U.S. defense capabilities to counterintelligence risk, puts U.S. defense firms at a competitive disadvantage against Israeli companies, deepens U.S. legal and reputational exposure for Israeli military actions without clear strategic justification, and shields ongoing U.S. military support for Israel from public and congressional transparency.

Not all critics oppose the broader U.S.-Israel alliance. Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno, a freshman member of the upper chamber, told reporters: “There’s nobody here who’s more of an ardent supporter of Israel’s right to exist and ability to defend themselves, but I don’t think we should integrate our military with anybody, not even the Bahamas.” Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a leading pro-Israel voice in Congress, has dismissed all criticism of the provision as “weird conspiracy theories… by people who hate Jews.”

Supporters of the initiative argue it creates a mutually beneficial partnership that reduces Israel’s reliance on direct U.S. foreign aid, while giving the U.S. access to cutting-edge Israeli defense technology and a live testing ground for new weapons systems in regional conflicts. “If you look at it from the perspective that Israel gets its funding and gets what it wants, and the Americans get to use Israeli incursions as a test bed for their own weaponry and also share intelligence, yeah, it is a win-win,” retired U.S. Marine Corps special operations officer Ivan Ingraham told Middle East Eye.

Even so, Ingraham acknowledged the arrangement ties the U.S. more closely to any potential Israeli war crimes, particularly amid ongoing Israeli military actions that have drawn global condemnation. The International Criminal Court has already issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes. “If the Israelis start doing or continue with what they’re doing in their own areas in the battle space, that means not only are we already complicit, but now we’re absolutely tied in with it,” Ingraham said. “The Israelis can’t operate without our support – literally – this just allows them to have a much more deep-seated foothold within our infrastructure.”

With the House bill stalled in the Senate over the provision and broader tensions over the Iran war, congressional leaders now face a delayed path to reconcile the two chamber’s versions of the NDAA. Lawmakers will not be able to finalize the legislation until both chambers pass a unified bill, a process that Paul says will likely not occur until November or December at the earliest.

For millions of young Indians across the country, a deeply shared anxiety has curdled into mass public action: if the high-stakes exams that are supposed to unlock their futures cannot be trusted, what can be? That question, sparked by repeated, high-profile leaks of public examination papers, has grown into the largest student mobilization India has seen in years, led by the youth-driven Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) movement. Weeks of simmering frustration boiled over on Monday, when tens of thousands of young protesters attempted to march on India’s national parliament in New Delhi, met with aggressive police action including tear gas barrages and baton charges. In the days that followed, thousands more joined demonstrations across the capital, with protests showing no signs of slowing.

At the heart of the movement is prominent activist Sonam Wangchuk, who wrapped up a 26-day hunger strike in support of the CJP’s demands late Thursday. Wangchuk reported losing 24 pounds during his fast, drawing widespread public attention to the movement’s core demands: sweeping education reforms and the immediate resignation of India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Despite the end of Wangchuk’s hunger strike, student leaders have confirmed demonstrations will continue until their full demands are addressed.

The movement has sparked urgent national debate: is this just another fleeting student protest, or the starting point of a larger political shift in India? History offers conflicting precedent: student movements have occasionally reshaped Indian politics, such as the 1970s Nav Nirman agitation in Gujarat that helped catalyze Jayaprakash Narayan’s widespread campaign against then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. But many other large youth uprisings have faded quickly from public view after an explosive debut.

What makes the CJP movement unusual is not just its unprecedented size, but the broad, cross-cutning nature of the anger driving it. Unlike the largest high-profile protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the past decade — from the 2019 citizenship law protests to the 2020-2021 farm laws demonstrations — this movement is not rooted in ideological conflict, nor does it represent the narrow interests of a single community or social group.

Instead, it challenges a core promise of the Indian state: that the national examination system, seen by millions of young people as their primary path to upward social mobility, will be fair and accessible. As Yamini Aiyar, Senior Visiting Fellow at Brown University, explained to the BBC, the Indian education and exam system crosses traditional lines of caste, class, and gender to an extraordinary degree, meaning the protesters gathered do not represent any single narrow interest group.

Rahul Verma, a fellow at New Delhi-based independent think tank the Centre for Policy Research, frames this as a fundamentally unique political challenge to the ruling BJP. “This movement centres on administrative failure,” Verma noted. “The state’s inability to conduct examinations fairly and prevent paper leaks makes it a very different kind of political challenge.” This change in the nature of the grievance reshapes Indian political dynamics: unlike earlier protests rooted in ideology or specific policy disputes, this movement directly questions the BJP’s basic ability to govern. Many of the participating protesters, Verma adds, are not traditional opponents of the BJP — they are aspirational young Indians and their parents who view these public exams as their best chance for upward mobility. Because the anger centers on governance failure rather than ideological opposition, the BJP cannot easily mobilize its base or deploy the partisan counter-narratives that helped it overcome earlier protest movements.

Monday’s massive turnout confirmed that the movement’s momentum, which had built rapidly online, has successfully translated to on-the-street action. For weeks before the parliamentary march, comparisons to India’s 2011 anti-corruption movement focused on the CJP’s impressive digital reach, with skeptics questioning whether online enthusiasm would translate to offline turnout. Monday’s crowds put those doubts to rest.

Joyojit Pal, a University of Michigan professor specializing in technology and society, describes modern social media as “a tinderbox waiting to explode with the next thing,” where viral spread is driven by raw collective emotion. Long-simmering public frustration over a lack of government accountability created the conditions for this mass protest, Pal says, and the structure of social media makes similar large-scale eruptions increasingly likely in the future.

Analysts now agree the movement may have already crossed a critical tipping point, though its long-term trajectory depends almost entirely on the BJP government’s response. Aiyar notes that while established political groups including student unions, left-wing organizations, and Dalit rights group the Bhim Army joined the march, they were vastly outnumbered by a spontaneous, organic outpouring of students from every corner of India. “That’s unique compared to any significant protest in India’s recent history,” she says. What is more, the movement has already outgrown its origins as a CJP-led campaign and Wangchuk’s hunger strike: “The catalyst may have been the CJP, but it became bigger than them.” Protesters did not only turn out over the paper leaks themselves, she explains, but to claim a public space to express the deep, long-held frustration over shrinking opportunity that many young Indians carry. Memes, posters, and on-the-ground slogans all point to grievances that stretch far beyond the specific issue of examination security.

After initially leaving the response to junior ministers and party spokespeople, the BJP’s top national leadership stepped in to address the protests this week. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh accused opposition parties of using students as “a political tool,” while asserting the government remained committed to addressing protester concerns through parliamentary processes. Prime Minister Modi addressed the controversy publicly for the first time on Thursday, writing on X that “Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth.” He announced the creation of fast-track courts to deliver “swift and stringent punishment” for anyone involved in organizing paper leaks, adding “Those who try to harm the future of our youth will not be spared.”

It remains unclear whether these promises will be enough to de-escalate the protests. Aiyar argues the movement has tapped into far broader national anxieties: a slowing economy, chronic job scarcity, and a growing sense that future generations will face fewer opportunities than their predecessors. “There is deep economic dissatisfaction and distress, which has translated into a lack of hope about the future,” she says. “This could reflect growing exhaustion with a government that has been in power for a long time. Its failure to deliver on the promises it built its reputation on may have reached a tipping point.” For Aiyar, the protests are about far more than a single administrative failure: protesters are sending a clear message that they are exhausted with the status quo, and demand a new kind of politics focused on good governance and tangible results, not just partisan rhetoric.

Whether this widespread frustration can coalesce into a lasting political movement remains an open question. Political scientist Suhas Palshikar argues the CJP movement may simply act as a temporary outlet for public anger before gradually losing momentum, similar to the post-repeal fade of the 2020-2021 farmers’ protests. “Where will the Cockroach movement go? Perhaps nowhere — it will allow venting of frustration and taper off,” he wrote on X. Palshikar also cautions against framing the movement as an inherently revolutionary Gen Z uprising, arguing that “It would be a mistake to imagine a youth movement or a Gen Z movement — these are only convenient myths for commentators.” The movement’s ideological and political identity remains fluid, he notes, and multiple competing political forces will almost certainly attempt to assert influence over it. That said, Palshikar acknowledges that protesters have already made one undeniable impact: they have proven young Indians are willing to confront the state directly, even in the face of harsh police repression, and have shown that street action is the only way to force the current regime to engage with public grievances. Whether that energy will endure, he argues, depends on multiple factors including state repression, media blackouts, internal leadership challenges, and the difficulty of building a lasting cross-group coalition.

Economist Surajit Mazumdar of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi agrees that the movement points to far larger shifts than just anger over paper leaks. “The current protest and the spontaneous response it has evoked is indicative of the widespread discontent of young people and students about the state of affairs in the country and in the education system which goes beyond the specific paper leak issue,” he told the BBC. Compared to earlier student mobilizations, Mazumdar says the current movement is broader and larger in scale, and rejects claims that it is post-ideological. Like the farmers’ movement before it, he argues, the CJP protests prove that “the democratic spirit is still alive in Indian society.”

For Aiyar, this democratic impulse is already reshaping the nature of Indian politics. “People are seeking accountability for governance in sites that are non-electoral,” she says. “The split between electoral legitimacy and democratic accountability outside electoral space is the new phenomenon of politics in India.” Only time will tell whether this shift proves to be the defining legacy of the CJP protests, or just a passing moment of widespread public anger.

The extreme sleep habits of Japan’s sitting prime minister have ignited widespread public discussion across the country and beyond, after Sanae Takaichi revealed she functions on as little as zero to three hours of sleep each night.

The revelation has raised pressing questions about the physical and mental demands of leading a modern industrialized nation, as well as sparked conversation around work culture norms in Japan, a country long associated with high-pressure, long-hour work environments. Political observers and public health experts have weighed in on the claim, with many noting that chronic extreme sleep restriction can impair cognitive function, decision-making ability, and long-term physical health – outcomes that carry significant risks for a leader responsible for steering national policy, managing diplomatic relations, and addressing domestic crises.

Members of the public have taken to social media and local media outlets to share a range of reactions: some have expressed admiration for what they frame as Takaichi’s extraordinary work ethic and dedication to public service, while others have voiced concern that the disclosure could normalize unhealthy overwork for workers across all sectors of Japanese society. The conversation comes at a time when Japan has been grappling with public policy efforts to reduce overwork and improve work-life balance for its population, making the prime minister’s comments particularly resonant in current national discourse.