Article Source: Times of Israel
Saudi Arabia has reached out to its ally Pakistan to acquire “off-the-shelf” atomic weapons as a nuclear arms race begins to shape up with Shiite rival Iran, US sources said.
Saudi Arabia has reached out to its ally Pakistan to acquire “off-the-shelf” atomic weapons as a nuclear arms race begins to shape up with Shiite rival Iran, US sources said.
“For the
Saudis the moment has come,” a former US defense official told the UK’s Sunday
Times. “There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis
and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”
Tensions
between Tehran and the kingdom have grown in the past few months as Saudi
Arabia stepped up its air campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
King Salman of Saudi Arabia refused an invitation to attend a landmark summit
hosted by US President Barack Obama last week, amid ongoing angst over US-led
nuclear talks with Iran.
Former Saudi
intelligence head Prince Turki bin Faisal expressed the kingdom’s desire for a
nuclear weapon last month at the Asan Plenum, a conference held by the South
Korean-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “Whatever the Iranians have, we
will have, too,” he said, according to The New York Times.
Faisal also
warned that the Iranian nuclear deal “opens the door to nuclear proliferation,
not closes it, as was the initial intention.”
According to
the Sunday Times report, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have enjoyed a mutually
beneficial relationship for decades. Saudi Arabia has given Pakistan billions
of dollars in subsidized oil, while the latter has unofficially agreed to
supply the Gulf state with nuclear warheads.
“Nuclear
weapons programs are extremely expensive and there’s no question that a lot of
the funding of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program was provided by Saudi
Arabia,” Lord David Owen, who served as England’s foreign secretary from
1977-1979, told the weekly publication.
“Given their
close relations and close military links, it’s long been assumed that if the
Saudis wanted, they would call in a commitment, moral or otherwise, for
Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads,” he added.
However, the
report added, Lt.Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who helped pioneer Pakistan’s nuclear
program, denied that Pakistan had ever granted Saudi Arabia access to its
nuclear technology.
The main
concern shared by US and European officials was that if Saudi Arabia were to
acquire an atomic weapon, it could spur other Sunni nations to follow suit.
An anonymous
British military official also told The Sunday Times that Western military
leaders “all assume the Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear.”
The official
added, “The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers — Turkey and Egypt — may
feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms
race.”
This
position was also mirrored by other, non-Saudi Gulf states at a summit last
week between the US and several Arab countries. One unnamed Gulf state leader
attending the Camp David summit told The New York Times, “We can’t sit back and
be nowhere as Iran is allowed to retain much of its capability and amass its
research.”
