ANTI-WAR campaigners have denounced Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s decision to back Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen. Your Party parliamentary leader Jeremy Corbyn said the move formed part of a pattern of intervention in the Middle East under Mr Burnham. The former Labour leader said: “Helping the US to bomb Iran.
Page A2From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 26 September 2026
Intelligence confirms Saudi Arabia is loading the starting gun senators warned about.
As it ran on the front
In July, the United States and Saudi Arabia reached the outline of a 30-year civilian nuclear deal. President Trump sent it to Congress on a Monday in August, and two days later, Sen. Ed Markey called it a "starting gun for a Middle East nuclear arms race." He wasn't speculating; the deal was already sitting in Congress in writing, available to anyone who wanted to read the same pages he had.
Three weeks after that, on September 18, Markey partnered with Sens. Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders to introduce legislation blocking a separate $5 billion conventional weapons sale to Saudi Arabia, while pushing for more details on the nuclear deal itself. "The United States must not send thousands of conventional weapons to Saudi Arabia or allow it to develop a nuclear program," Markey said.…
…(cont) Four days later, on September 22, anti-war campaigners in Britain denounced Prime Minister Andy Burnham for backing Saudi Arabia's assault on Yemen. Jeremy Corbyn called it a pattern of intervention in the Middle East, and the pattern has a paper trail: Iran, then Yemen, then a civilian nuclear deal Congress is reviewing this week.
This week, the New York Times reported what an intelligence assessment already found: Saudi Arabia is open to developing nuclear weapons.
The senators weren't wrong in August. They were early. The assessment didn't uncover anything Markey hadn't already said out loud on the record a month earlier — it just arrived with a government letterhead attached, printed in the paper of record like news instead of like the thing three sitting senators had already tried to stop.
Follow where the money and the technology actually travel: American companies get to share nuclear technology, Saudi Arabia gets the reactors and the option attached to them, and the $5 billion in conventional weapons moves alongside on its own bill, itemized separately so it never has to be added up in the same sitting. That's not bad timing. That's a deal advancing on schedule while the senators who raised the alarm are still on record trying to stop it, and the record just keeps stacking up anyway.
“Follow it in order: senators say don't do this, the deal goes to Congress anyway, and a month later the intelligence community confirms the exact thing the senators said would happen. That's not a warning system, that's a receipt. Somebody already decided the reactors and the $5 billion in weapons are worth the risk, and it won't be them standing near either one when it goes wrong.”
“A civilian nuclear program and a conventional weapons sale are two completely separate conversations, and lumping them together the way these senators do is just fearmongering — okay, they're literally moving through Congress the same month, fine, but the alliance angle is what matters, we need Saudi Arabia standing with us against Iran, that's just strategy, it's not like we're handing them a — did I say handing them a bomb? I meant a partnership. A civilian partnership.”
The receipts
A trio of progressive US senators this week introduced legislation to block a $5 billion conventional weapons sale to Saudi Arabia while also pushing for the release of more details about President Donald Trump's proposed nuclear cooperation agreement with the Middle Eastern kingdom. "The United States must not send thousands of…
An intelligence assessment examined Saudi Arabia’s military ambitions as Congress reviews a new civilian nuclear deal between the U.S. and the kingdom.
· Markey Urges Congress to Block Trump-Saudi Deal, a 'Starting Gun for a Middle East Nuclear Arms Race' from the morgue, 26 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.