Iran Deal Makes Nuclear Saudi Arabia An InevitabilityMideast Arms Race: Secretary of State John Kerry can assure the Saudis all he wants that Iran won’t become nuclear-armed, just as he gave a “guarantee” to the Israelis. They, and other Mideast powers, aren’t blind.
Saudi Arabia’s ruler, King Salman, following a summit of Gulf nations last week, warned that if the Obama administration follows through on its proposed nuclear agreement with Iran, it will likely be guilty of “plunging the region into an arms race.”
The land of Mohammad will arm itself with nukes, followed by other Islamic powers. It is a remarkable, if unsurprising, development, considering that the Saudis have long argued in favor of keeping the Muslim Mideast a nuclear-free zone.
Kerry himself met with Salman, emerging to remark that “we believe that it is so important that Iran not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.”
But this illustrates the great delusion of Obama’s foreign policy, and indeed that of most of the Democratic party: that in-the-flesh diplomacy can work wonders on friends, allies and enemies alike.
The Saudis have for many years had the nuclear option in their . .. well, thawbs (those ankle-length robes that don’t feature back pockets).
In 1985 the kingdom purchased 50 intermediate-range ballistic missiles from China. They have a range of approximately 1,500 miles, which can reach Tehran, as well as India and Russia.
They’re not accurate enough for use with conventional warheads, and so have been sitting, waiting for the day when Saudi Arabia must go nuclear.
And going nuclear would be a lot easier for the Saudis than the Iranians. Enjoying close relations with the already nuclear-armed Pakistani government, the oil-rich Saudis wouldn’t have to do much more than peel off some very welcome petrodollars, amounting to a tiny percentage of their annual oil revenues.
Indeed, 16 years ago the physicist who fathered Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, A.Q. Khan, traveled to the kingdom following a visit from the Saudi military to Pakistan’s nuclear facilities.
So it’s clear they’ve already thought about this.
The Saudis are already involved in an increasingly heated proxy war with Iran in Yemen. They see over $100 billion in Iranian assets about to be unfrozen once a deal comes and sanctions are lifted against the Shiite Tehran regime. Do we really want to nuclearize that?
“Our allies aren’t listening to us, and this is what is making us extremely nervous,” UPI quotes Prince Faisal bin Saud bin Abdulmohsen of the King Faisal Center for Research & Islamic Studies in Riyadh as saying.
“If I am basing my judgment on the track record and our experience with Iran,” he adds, “I will say they will do anything in their power to get a nuclear weapon. A delay of 10 years,” as the proposed deal reportedly requires, “is not going to satiate anything.”
Do President Obama and Secretary Kerry really think meetings and phone calls will convince the Saudis that these fears are unwarranted — any more than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be convinced, or anyone else in the Middle East with their eyes wide open, for that matter?
Abdullah al Askar, Saudi legislator and former chairman of the legislature’s foreign affairs committee, warned, according to the Wall Street Journal, that “if Iran does it, nothing can prevent us from doing it too, not even the international community.”
And if Saudi goes nuclear, so will Egypt and Turkey. Moreover, even before Tehran gets nukes, that $100 billion-plus will mean an expansion of its power over other Muslim states, ones that are less extremist and friendlier to the U.S.
And while all that is happening, America’s power wanes in the Mideast; Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other states no longer feel they can depend on Uncle Sam.
But enough on the disadvantages of a nuclear deal with Iran. What about the advantages?
What advantages?
No comments:
Post a Comment