Saudi Arabia and UAE fear Iran’s nuclear weapons program. They have for years. Normally, when a nation decides to pursue this course, they get their engineers trained into nuclear with commercial reactors. That’s why they have both expressed interest in that. If Iran went nuclear, they were too. There is no lamenting the demise or delay in the Iranian weapons program in the halls of power in UAE or the house of Saud. I still have articles from years ago detailing the plans for commercial reactors throughout the ME and the massive amount of money they were prepared to pour into the plans. This distrust is based on the Shia-Sunni divide, which runs hot throughout the Islamic world and always will. People are generally unfamiliar with the dynamics in the ME. Virtually every nation wanted to see the demise of Iran's nuclear program.

1/ I don't think you understand how any of this works from an engineering standpoint. Let's rehearse a few details. The bombing of Fordow may have destroyed the mountain, or it may not have. I'll wait on evidence before weighing in with any certainty. That's what good analysts do. @iwasnevrhere_ 2/ However, let me help you to understand what's going on now and will go on in the future. The centrifuges are utterly destroyed. Their balance has been completely disturbed, and they cannot work now. They have no power anyway.

1/ I don’t think this is a very good article. I studied both the Fukushima and Chernobyl accidents, and in fact trained DOE safety engineers on the reactivity feedback characteristics of the RBMK reactors

bbc.com/news/articles/… 2/ Chernobyl was problematic because of fission products (mainly Cs-137) and the fact that an active fire was blowing fission product inventory out of a weak containment design (and the Russian government left people in place).