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Full discussion transcribed after this:
by Rod D. Martin
July 24, 2026
I appeared on NTD Newsroom with Don Ma to go in-depth on the U.S.–Saudi nuclear deal, and why it’s about far more than energy. By tying American-built reactors to normalization with Israel, President Trump is encouraging regional peace while increasing Saudi oil exports (and thus lowering prices), enriching U.S. industry, reducing proliferation risks, and deepening American influence over the most important countries in the region. It is the fulfillment of Eisenhower’s dream of “Atoms For Peace”.
We also discussed Palestinian statehood, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Houthi threat, and Trump’s broader “Commerce Not Chaos” strategy for making peace more profitable than war.
It’s 12 minutes that quickly explain this incredibly complex issue. Watch the interview, and pass it along!
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Here’s our full discussion:
Don Ma: The United States and Saudi Arabia are signing a landmark peace deal — a peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement, to be exact. Joining us now to discuss this is Rod Martin, geopolitical analyst and founder and CEO of Martin Capital.
Rod, good afternoon. Always great to have you on the show. President Trump is giving Saudi Arabia a civilian nuclear program, and in return, he’s asking the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel. What do you think about this deal?
Rod D. Martin: This is really great, and the key word in that is “give.” We are giving them permission. We are providing them the technology and equipment. We are going to help them. But we’re not going to do it for free.
The president is a savvy operator, and this deal ensures that only American companies will be providing the actual construction and the actual nuclear technology. That’s a big deal because Saudi Arabia has options. There’s no reason they couldn’t go to the Chinese. There’s no reason they couldn’t go to the Russians. In a pinch, they could go to Pakistan, with whom they now have a formal defense agreement.
There are options in the world, and this president is committed to American industry leading wherever it possibly can. We’re going to help them build some civilian reactors. There’s no enrichment on the table. That’s been bandied about by the media for the last couple of days. Enrichment is almost certainly not going to happen.
But this new contingency — this requirement that, for the deal to go ahead, the Saudis have to join the Abraham Accords — is actually really encouraging. Again, it’s another example of Trump’s “Commerce Not Chaos” diplomacy. It’s also the fulfillment of Eisenhower’s dream of “Atoms For Peace”.
It is just stupid for Saudi Arabia to still technically be at war with a country with which it engaged in multiple levels of defense cooperation, even intelligence cooperation. It’s time to formalize the peace and move the Middle East in the right direction.
These nuclear plants will also help because they’ll allow Saudi Arabia to export more oil instead of burning it. That will bring down global oil prices, especially after the UAE’s departure from OPEC.
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Palestinian Statehood and Saudi Priorities
Don Ma: What do you say to the issue of Palestinian statehood? I don’t know if Saudi Arabia is going to maintain its position that normalization with Israel requires a pathway to Palestinian statehood. Is that going to be an obstacle?
Rod D. Martin: Almost certainly. It has been so far. But I think the Saudis really want nuclear plants, and I don’t blame them. I want nuclear plants in the United States too.
If you want to export oil and gas, you need another way to produce power. It’s just a no-brainer.
Twenty years ago, you constantly heard people on both the right and the left saying Iran had no need for a nuclear reactor. Well, yes, they actually do. They’re an oil exporter. They need civilian nuclear power to avoid burning what they’d otherwise export.
What they don’t need is what they actually built, which is almost entirely a weapons program.
Because the United States will be stewarding this with the Saudis, we have reasonable guarantees that the Saudis are never going to be able to use what we build for them to build nuclear weapons.
We have a lot of people saying, “Oh, this will start an arms race in the region.” No, it won’t. This is not the first Middle Eastern country with nuclear power. You have nuclear reactors coming online in Turkey and Egypt. You have an actual operating civilian plant in the UAE, currently generating 25 percent of that country’s electricity. And, of course, then you have Iran’s Bushehr plant.
This deal is a good step forward. I think we’re going to be able to get past the Palestinian issue because, now that we have the Board of Peace and the surrender of Hamas, we have everybody kind of on the same page there. I think there’s a decent chance that MBS, whose generation is not as committed to the Palestinian cause as its elders, may be able to take the lead and see this through to completion.
Energy, American Industry, and a Generational Shift
Don Ma: It’s entirely possible, as you suggested, that their desire for a nuclear power plant is stronger than their concern over the Palestinian issue. Maybe Saudi Arabia just needs the proper incentive, and maybe this could be it.
But you said earlier that Saudi Arabia has options, like China, for example, for nuclear power plants. Do you think it would have been only a matter of time, if the United States didn’t make this deal, before Saudi Arabia pursued nuclear power anyway, potentially with Russia or China?
Rod D. Martin: Or both. Absolutely. They’re going to do this. It’s a no-brainer.
Again, if you want to sell oil and gas, you don’t want to be burning it unless you absolutely have to. It doesn’t make sense to be using your own supply. It’s just crazy. Russia, which until recently had long been the world’s biggest oil producer, has an extensive complex of nuclear power plants for exactly this reason.
So to the degree that these countries can diversify their power mix, they are richer. Their energy is cheaper. They have a long-term power source that doesn’t reduce their ability to earn foreign currency from exports. It’s just good all around.
It’s good for us, too. Again, we have a significant nuclear industry in this country that is now going to get all these deals. The deal is exclusive. Nobody gets to play in this market except U.S. companies. That’s a huge win for Trump’s trade policy.
We’ll see on the generational issue. Once again, MBS is the crown prince. His father, the king, and indeed the king’s entire age group, are really committed to the idea of Palestinian statehood. The younger generation really isn’t, not to the same degree. They understand the realities on the ground.
The fact is that none of the Arab countries will allow Palestinians to move into their countries anymore, because doing so inevitably brings terrorism and attempted coups. The Palestinians moved into Jordan after the Six-Day War and immediately tried to overthrow their host government. They moved into Lebanon after they got kicked out of Jordan and immediately started the Lebanese Civil War. Nobody wants to deal with that.
MBS’s generation wants a peaceful solution. I don’t know if that’s going to include a Palestinian state, but my guess is that, if there is one, it will exist in federation with Israel, with internal autonomy but some overarching management of things that guarantees Israeli security and the security of its neighbors.
Egypt built an enormous wall between itself and Gaza, something it does not have between itself and Israel. There’s a reason for that.
Nuclear Nonproliferation and Regional Stability
Don Ma: At the beginning of this interview, you briefly touched on nuclear proliferation. Can you elaborate a bit more on why you think this doesn’t weaken nuclear nonproliferation?
Rod D. Martin: We’re just not going to give them anything that allows them to enrich uranium to a point that they could turn it into any kind of working bomb. It’s just not going to happen.
Because they’re going to be dependent on U.S. technology, U.S. parts, U.S. repair crews — U.S. everything — it’s pretty easy to control that.
The other reason is actually just who we’re making a deal with. Saudi Arabia could have pursued nuclear weapons at any point. Saudi Arabia potentially could have bought nuclear weapons from Pakistan. They’ve avoided that.
The Saudis have not been a military threat to their neighbors, other than the Houthi terrorists in Yemen. They have been good neighbors for the most part. They’re not trying to upset the balance of power, and they’re not trying to put themselves in a position where they spark an arms race.
They’re not as safe an ally, perhaps, as Japan, but they’re a good ally. They’ve been an increasingly close partner for the United States.
I feel very confident that, if we can get to this Abraham Accords settlement, everybody in the region is going to be infinitely more focused than they have been on making money and prospering together. And the more diversified and intertwined these countries’ economies become, the harder it is to go to war, directly or indirectly. That is the only possible road to peace.
The truth is, with the Iranians increasingly off the board, Hamas largely disarmed, Hezbollah getting removed from Lebanon, the leadership of the Iraqi Shiite militias being arrested and the militias themselves being disarmed by the Iraqi government, Syria no longer an Iranian satellite, and the Houthis about to get smacked, Tehran doesn’t have a lot of cards to play anymore. They have kept the region in conflict for decades. That’s ending.
This is the time for peaceful nuclear power. Our involvement ensures a minimal proliferation risk. If the Saudis were doing this deal with China or Russia, there would be no such guarantees.
Isolating Iran Through Commerce and Energy
Don Ma: You brought up Iran. Do you think this move could further isolate Iran, with the United States stepping in as a closer partner to Saudi Arabia?
Rod D. Martin: No question. All of these moves are interrelated.
Take the maritime-risk move we were talking about a few months ago, where the United States Development Finance Corporation is stepping into the shoes previously held by Lloyd’s of London to guarantee these tankers. You see the effect. We’ve moved 900 commercial vessels through the Strait just in the past few weeks. A lot of that is because we’re backstopping the insurance.
Likewise, we dislodged the UAE from OPEC. Without the UAE, there’s really only one country left in OPEC that can meaningfully constrict supply enough to move prices, and that’s Saudi Arabia.
We’re going to do this nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. That’s going to encourage them to do the right thing on oil prices, not just because they have more oil to sell but because they’re increasingly tied to us. And if they’re part of the Abraham Accords, they’re tied more closely not just to us and not just to Israel, but to their other neighbors who’ve joined that group.
All of these things encourage cross-border commerce. All of these things encourage peace. And the United States is unashamedly choosing to profit from it. It’s about time we did.
The Houthis and Iran’s Remaining Options
Don Ma: Let me ask you one more question. It relates to the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. They claimed attacks on two tankers in the Red Sea that were Saudi ships. Any final comments on that?
Rod D. Martin: This is a real mistake. It’s kind of a desperation play on Iran’s part.
I think the president has been reasonably clear, and I’m pretty sure he will make it even clearer. This week he said — and Marco Rubio came back and agreed — that our strategy is “a head for an eye,” not “an eye for an eye.” We’re going to use disproportionate force against Iran to compel better behavior.
We can take out bridges and power plants till the cows come home. I think they will extend that to what the Houthis do, because the Houthis are under complete direction and command from Tehran. There’s no question.
They have their own reasons for existing and for attacking, of course. They’re not just automatons. But functionally, they’re an Iranian expeditionary army. If they’re harassing global commerce, they’re harming everyone. The U.S. Navy is going to blow them up, and you may be sure, Trump will make Iran pay for everything the Houthis do. We will likely start taking out bridges and power plants in Iran for every ship the Houthis hit, just as we’re about to do regarding Iran’s direct attacks against ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
I don’t think this is a smart play, on Iran’s part or the Houthis. But I think it’s one of the few plays they have left.
Don Ma: Rod, good comments. As always, thank you for your time today.
Rod D. Martin: Thank you. I appreciate it.
