Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons.
This new threat of proliferation in one of the world’s most dangerous regions comes on top of a crisis over Iran’s alleged nuclear programme.
A strategy paper being considered at the highest levels in Riyadh sets out three options:
To try to reach a regional agreement on having a nuclear-free Middle East.
Until now, the assumption in Washington was that Saudi Arabia was content to remain under the United States nuclear umbrella. But the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US has worsened steadily since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington: 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi.
It is not known whether Saudi Arabia has taken a decision on any of the three options. But the fact that it is prepared to contemplate the nuclear option is a worrying development.
United Nations officials and nuclear arms analysts said the Saudi review reflected profound insecurities generated by the volatility in the Middle East, Riyadh’s estrangement with Washington and the weakening of its reliance on the US nuclear umbrella.
They pointed to the Saudi worries about an Iranian programme and to the absence of any international pressure on Israel, which has an estimated 200 nuclear devices.
”Our antennae are up,” said a senior UN official watching worldwide nuclear proliferation efforts. ”The international community can rest assured we do keep track of such events if they go beyond talk.”
Saudi Arabia does not regard Iran, a past adversary with which Riyadh has restored relations, as a direct threat. But it is unnerved by the possibility of Iran and Israel having nuclear weapons.
Riyadh is also paranoid about a string of apparent leaks in American papers from the US administration critical of Saudi Arabia.
David Albright, director of the Washington think-tank Institute for Science and International Security, said he doubted whether the Saudis would try to build a nuclear bomb, preferring instead to try to buy a nuclear warhead. They would be the first of the world’s eight or nine nuclear powers to have bought rather than built the bomb.
”There have always been worries that the Saudis would go down this path if provoked,” said Albright. ”There is growing US hostility, which could lead to the removal of the US umbrella, and will the Saudis be intimidated by Iran? They’ve got to be nervous.”
UN officials said there had been rumours going back 20 years that the Saudis wanted to pay Pakistan to do the research and development on nuclear weapons.
In 1988 the Saudis bought from China intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching any part of the Middle East with a nuclear warhead.
Four years ago, Saudi Arabia sent a defence team to Pakistan to tour its secret nuclear facilities and to be briefed by Abdul Qader Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb.
A UN official said: ”There’s obviously a lot of restlessness in the Middle East. Regional insecurity tends to produce a quest for a nuclear umbrella. The Saudis have the money and could provide it to Pakistan.”
Albright said the Saudis would face a long haul if they were determined to acquire nuclear weapons. He doubted whether anyone would sell.
Arab countries on Wednesday urged the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, to get tough with Israel to let inspectors assess its nuclear programme in line with similar pressure on Iran.
Oman’s ambassador to the agency, Salim al-Riyami, speaking on behalf of the Arab League, which represents Arab states, said it was time to get tough with Israel. ”I think it’s time to deal with this issue more substantively than before,” he said.
The players in the nuke game
Ian Traynor
Apart from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain), which are all nuclear powers, about 25 countries have sought to obtain nuclear weapons, say international analysts.
Israel, India, Pakistan and South Africa are known to have succeeded, though South Africa voluntarily relinquished its bomb in the 1990s.
North Korea is feared to be building a bomb, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq tried and failed, and Iran is said to be creating the capacity. Japan has the fissile material and the know-how to develop one quickly.
Other countries rumoured to have nuclear ambitions include Brazil, Argentina, Libya and Algeria.
Israel
It has never officially declared itself a nuclear power, but is by some distance the mightiest outside the Big Five, with the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, inaugurating the project in the mid-1950s in great secrecy. It had a rudimentary device by the late 1960s. Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear technician, famously blew the whistle on the programme in 1986 and was imprisoned.
France is believed to have secretly supplied Israel with a nuclear reactor and equipment for extracting weapons-grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel in the 1950s.
Israel is estimated to have stockpiles of more than half a tonne of plutonium and an unknown quantity of weapons-grade high-enriched uranium. Experts estimate that Israel has about 200 nuclear devices.
India
For decades India pursued the bomb, using a plutonium extraction plant and two heavy water reactors that produce plutonium. The Indian effort was based at the Bhabha atomic research centre outside Bombay. It went public in 1974 when a plutonium-core fission bomb was tested in the Rajasthan desert.
Analysts estimate India has about 70 nuclear devices. Its stockpile of weapons-grade fissile material is believed to extend to more than 300kg of plutonium and a small quantity of high-enriched uranium.
Pakistan
The Indian successes triggered a nuclear arms race on the sub-continent.
The father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qader Khan, worked in The Netherlands for what became the Anglo-Dutch-German Urenco company specialising in uranium enrichment. He is said to have stolen centrifuge designs for uranium enrichment and inaugurated the crash Pakistani programme. The Pakistanis built the Kahuta enrichment plant using the Urenco designs to produce weapons-grade uranium, and are believed to have obtained weapons designs from China. Pakistan announced it had the bomb in 1998.
It is the only country known with certainty to have a bomb developed from a programme started after the nuclear non-proliferation treaty came into force in 1970. It is believed to have at least 700kg of weapons-grade uranium and a small quantity of plutonium stockpiled and to have up to 15 nuclear devices.
North Korea
The current crisis over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions came to a head last year when Pyongyang cut off relations with the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and said it would not observe the non-proliferation treaty.
The jury is still out on whether North Korea has the bomb. It said last month it could test a nuclear device when it wanted. Washington believes it may have two.
It appears to have stockpiled enough plutonium for a couple of bombs after building a small reactor at Yongbyon in 1980 and putting it into operation in 1986. A 1994 agreement with the US froze the programme, but that broke down last year.
Multilateral efforts are under way to defuse the crisis, which is having the knock-on effect of encouraging Japan, the only country to have been hit by an atomic bomb, to build its own. Japan has a large civil nuclear power sector, ample stockpiles of plutonium and the technological and scientific resources to obtain a nuclear bomb swiftly.
Iran
A dripfeed of revelations from UN inspectors over recent months is hardening suspicions that Tehran is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, or creating the wherewithal. It was last week presented with an ultimatum by the UN: reveal all by the end of next month and allow unrestricted inspections.
Recent discoveries and question marks include the tracing of two different types of weapons-grade uranium at an underground uranium enrichment centre being built in central Iran; the disclosure that the programme goes back to 1985 and not 1997, as previously stated; evidence of uranium metal conversion testing and substantial rebuilding at a suspect Tehran facility, apparently to frustrate UN inspections and environmental sampling for radioactive materials.
The US has long accused the Iranians of conducting a covert weapons programme. They are now being joined by many other countries. There is no evidence the Iranians have a nuclear weapon, but ample assertions that they could have one in a couple of years. — Â