"Hearing echoes of US military support for Shah of Iran, Democratic congressman calls for hearings on Saudi nuclear deal
At House foreign affairs committee hearing on Wednesday, congressman Brad Sherman, a Los Angeles Democrat, called for an oversight hearing of the Trump administration's nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, suggesting that exporting that technology could be as big a mistake as having armed the Shah of Iran in the 1970s.
"There are those who think that the Saudi possession of nuclear technology is totally benign, but I've been involved in this for a long time, and I remember when the most powerful monarch in the Middle East was a good friend of America.
And the Shah got his hands on important US military technology.
Thank God, nothing nuclear," Sherman said while questioning Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, and former national security adviser to Donald Trump.
"Everything the Shah had in 1978 was in the mullahs' hands in 1979," Sherman said, referring to the Islamic revolution that toppled the Iranian monarch and brought the theocratic regime to power.
"We have no idea who is going to be running Saudi Arabia 10 years from now."
www.theguardian.com
