Saudis want a US nuclear deal; can they be trusted not to build a bomb?

Prince Mohammed set off alarms when he declared earlier this year that if Iran, Saudi Arabia's fiercest rival, 'developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible'

Before Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was implicated by the C.I.A. in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, American intelligence agencies were trying to solve a separate mystery: Was the prince laying the groundwork for building an atomic bomb?

The 33-year-old heir to the Saudi throne had been overseeing a negotiation with the Energy Department and the State Department to get the United States to sell designs for nuclear power plants to the kingdom. The deal was worth upward of $80 billion, depending on how many plants Saudi Arabia decided to build.

But there is a hitch: Saudi Arabia insists on