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News ID: 67350
Publish Date : 23 June 2019 - 22:20

Saudi Arabia’s Atomic Ambitions Raise Alarm

LONDON (Dispatches) -- The prevailing order and status-quo balance of power in the Middle East is being changed under Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, who continues to receive extraordinary support from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.
Whether it is an attempt to revise the status quo in favor of Riyadh, or prevent it from being revised by others, Saudi Arabia's nuclear and missile programs are bound to have significant regional implications, the Middle East Eye wrote.
Earlier this month, Tim Kaine, Democratic senator from Virginia, revealed that the Trump administration had approved the transfer of nuclear know-how to Saudi Arabia seven times, including twice after the murder of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi in early October 2018.
One of the transfers was authorized on October 18, only 16 days after Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was brutally eliminated inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to the US senator.
"The Trump administration is seeking to negotiate a nuclear cooperation agreement that would allow Saudi Arabia to use U.S. technology for energy purposes, but not nuclear weapons," Nicholas L Miller, professor of government at Dartmouth College, told Middle East Eye.
"There is a concern in the administration that if the Saudis don't choose the United States as their supplier, they will turn to South Korea, Russia, or China, who tend to have weaker nonproliferation controls in their agreements," said Miller, the author of, Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of U.S. Nonproliferation Policy.
Yet Trump's transactional and profit-centered approach to foreign policy-making - which arguably prompted his landmark 20 November statement of almost unqualified support for the Saudi leadership amid the Khashoggi fallout - and the secrecy with which U.S. nuclear technology transfers to Riyadh are taking place, have raised doubts about the U.S. resolve, or even ability, to keep possible Saudi nuclear ambitions in check.
In late March, the Reuters news agency disclosed the Trump administration's "secret" approval of licenses for six U.S. firms to sell atomic power technology to Riyadh.
Simultaneously, the Saudis are seeking to develop a ballistic missile program of their own, apparently with Chinese assistance.
In November 2018, satellite imagery taken by the U.S. company Planet Labs showed what appeared to be rocket engine tests for ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons at a military base near the town of al-Dawadmi, about 230km west of Riyadh.
Several months later, in an exclusive report published on 5 June, CNN cited U.S. intelligence sources as claiming that Riyadh had significantly advanced the missile program with the help of China.
Interestingly, the discovery infuriated Democratic lawmakers as the White House had "deliberately" refrained from sharing its knowledge of the high-stakes development with key members of Congress until they found out about it "outside of regular U.S. government channels".
"Saudi Arabia's development of ballistic missiles goes against longstanding U.S. policy of opposing missile proliferation in the region," said Miller.
"But the Trump administration has so far been relatively quiet about its response.
"There seems to be a pattern in this administration of looking the other way at provocative Saudi behavior due to the laser-like focus on Iran."
These concurrent and mostly clandestine missile and nuclear activities are sounding alarm bells in many capitals in the region.
 "A nuclear Saudi Arabia means nuclear proliferation in the most unstable and volatile region of the world," Ali Bakeer, a Turkey-based political analyst told MEE.
"Given the reckless leadership in Riyadh, this is an alarming development for small states in the Persian Gulf in particular, which might either seek a nuclear umbrella from great powers or consider constructing parallel deterrence capabilities of their own if they could afford it."
Notably, before imposing an all-out diplomatic and economic boycott on Qatar in June 2017, Saudi Arabia, according to U.S. officials, was devising a military plan to invade the small nation and seize its North Dome gas field.
It is the world's largest gas field, and adjacent to the Iranian South Pars field. The capture would have made Riyadh the second-biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas in the world overnight.
The harshest reactions have, however, come from Tehran.
In his Persian New Year address on 21 March, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said that if the Saudis build a nuclear capability with U.S. assistance, "it will fall into the hands of Islamic combatants in the not-so-distant era".
Shortly afterwards, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani warned that the Islamic Republic might be forced to modify its defense posture and national security strategy in response to "suspicious nuclear projects" in the region.
"New threats like this will force us to revise our strategy based on the nature and geography of such threats, and predict the requirements of our country and armed forces," he said.
While Saudi Arabia, a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is nearing completion of its first atomic reactor in the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology near Riyadh, it has so far resisted calls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IEA) to implement proportionate safeguards and an inspection regime that would preclude possible deviation towards weaponization. 
"Saudi Arabia is currently subject to less intrusive monitoring by international inspectors because Riyadh concluded what is known as a small quantities protocol with the agency," Kelsey Davenport, director of Nonproliferation Policy at Arms Control Association, told MEE.
"The small quantities protocol was designed to simplify safeguards for states with minimal or no nuclear material, but it is no longer adequate for Saudi Arabia's expanding nuclear program."
Tytti Erasto, a researcher with the Nuclear Disarmament Program of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, concurs.
"In theory, Saudis abide by the IAEA Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) but in practice, it is not applied," he told MEE.
"This is because the so-called small quantities protocol (SQP) - which exempts Riyadh from inspections - has been applied in the Saudi case, based on the assumption that its nuclear activities are minimal.
"However, this is changing due to Saudi Arabia's plans to expand its nuclear program.”