The Obama administration recently signed a controversial nuclear deal with the United Arab Emirates. The Christian Science Monitor [2] reports how some experts argue that the deal does not have adequate provisions to prevent technologies from being diverted to future nuclear weapons programs. In addition to satisfying energy needs, states like the U.A.E., Egypt, and Saudi Arabia may be using these nuclear deals to obtain a nuclear hedge against Iran.

Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund, commented, "The US does not have a strategy to deal with this very real issue of proliferation, all they have is a sale." He argues that such nuclear deals should not be "awarded" in a vacuum, but that the US should "look beyond the present conditions and [look instead] at the regional problems and motivations."

The article also quotes Ploughshares grantee Henry Sokolski, who says, "Some of the most offensive passages were fixed [by the Obama administration] but there is still a lot of room for improvement." Mr. Sokolski is the Executive Director of the Nuclear Proliferation Education Center [3].