PART 1 OF 2
One of the least talked-about but most consequential results of a failure to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power is that it would almost certainly persuade the Saudis to follow suit. For more than a decade, the mainstream media has been silent on the issue of Riyadh’s nuclear intentions.i While the recent article in the German magazine Cicero claiming that Saudi Arabia, with assistance from Pakastani experts, is working secretly on a nuclear program was widely reported in the Asian press, it was ignored both here and in Britain.
What, if anything, the Saudis are up to is shrouded in mystery; this post will not solve it. My purpose is to set forth the facts (such as they are) and the speculation surrounding them. Before doing so, a narrative on Saudi-Iranian relations is in order.
I. Post-Revolutionary Iran and Saudi Arabia
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died on June 3, 1989, ten years and four months after he had returned to Iran from exile in France. The Ayatollah left a 29-page will that included a stinging attack on the Saudi king, whom he described as a “traitor to God.” Muslims, he said,
should curse tyrants, including the Saudi royal family, these traitors to God’s great shrine, may God’s curse and that of his prophets and angels be upon them . . . King Fahd spends a large part of the people’s wealth every year on the anti-Qor’anic, totally baseless and superstitious faith of Wahhabism. He abuses Islam and the dear Qor’an.ii
After his return to Iran, Khomeini’s subjects were quick to take his life-long hatred of the Saudis to heart. On November 20, 1979—only ten months after his plane landed in Baghdad—hundreds of armed fanatics seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca and “demonized the Saudi regime over the mosque’s loudspeaker system and called for an uprising and removal of the Saudi regime.”iii It took two weeks for the Saudi National Guard and army to regain control of the mosque.
Later that month, a large group of Shi’a from the eastern Saudi province of Qatif, in violation of a ban imposed by the province’s governor, attempted to celebrate the Ashura ceremonies.iv Seventeen members of the Saudi National Guard were killed during the 24 hours it took to suppress the violators.
In the midst of Iran’s ideological offensive against Saudi Arabia, Iraq invaded (on September 22, 1980) Iran. During the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war, Iran conducted a series of offensive maneuvers against Saudi Arabia. Iranian combat aircraft probed into Saudi territory and attacked tanker traffic traveling to and from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.iv
Memories of the 1980s haven’t faded in Saudi Arabia. In an article published in the Joint Forces Quarterly in 2002, Saudi Prince Naef bin Ahmed Al-Saud, a colonel in the Saudi Armed Forces with responsibilities for strategic planning, had this to say about the 1980s:
Iran did not refrain from publicizing its intention to spread instability in radical terms. It attempted in the 1980s to foment instability in the kingdom during the Haj and cause trouble among Shiites in Bahrain and Kuwait.
Elsewhere in his article, the Prince, who we can assume was speaking for the Royal Family, described his country’s geostrategic position:
Though nations can’t choose their location, they can determine how to deal with geographic realities. Surrounded by states with great ambitions, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is as large as the United States east of the Mississippi and has vast wealth for a relatively small population. Not only does it have huge oil reserves; its extensive coastlines on both the Red Sea and Persian Gulf overlook nearby vital sealanes. It also has long borders with neighbors. Despite its size, most oil fields as well as many ports and urban centers are close to other local powers. Saudi Arabia must weigh the implications of its geostrategic location and international politics as various states pursue dominance in the area.[emphasis added] This applies not only to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, but also to the Horn of Africa, another area suffering from chronic instability.
Al-Saud penned his piece before Saddam was overthrown. So now it’s surely the case that Iran tops the list of the “various states” pursuing dominance in Saudi Arabia’s neighborhood. Thus, the Iranian threat is the context in which to view these words from the Prince:
The Saudi people must be ready to meet external threats to their country and the region. Change in other countries can also impact the stability of the area as a whole. Aggressive actors must be confronted by a military capability that can persuade and, if necessary, compel them to refrain from expansionist tendencies. [emphasis added]
In a provocative, tantalizing paragraph, Al-Saud doesn’t rule out the possibility that the Saudis are pursuing a “nuclear option”:
Saudi Arabia does not accept the notion that a Pakistani bomb is an Islamic bomb. Instead, national interest is regarded as the most likely factor affecting how nuclear capabilities will be used. Nevertheless, regional competition increases concern among Saudis over the spread of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. Moreover, despite the lack of evidence that Riyadh may be pursuing a nuclear option, some speculate on the possibility. [emphasis added]
It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to infer that, if faced with a nuclear Iran, the Saudis will feel compelled to acquire—not necessarily develop—a nuclear deterrent. While the Prince’s words and the logic of the Saudi’s situation leads to this inference, the official position of the Government is to deny any intention of doing so. High ranking officials in the Kingdom repeatedly renounce interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, pointing to Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in October 1988 and its consistent position calling for the creation of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. In 2003, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Kingdom’s foreign affairs chieftain, denied that the Kingdom would develop nuclear weapons in response to Iran’s acquiring them, stating,
No, we will not [build our own nuclear weapons]. We do not believe that it gives any country security to build nuclear weapons.v
Will they or won’t they? Tomorrow, we’ll examine the evidence.
- With the exception of the Washington Times.↩
- Quoted in Baqer Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah, (St. Martin’s Press, 1999).↩
- Steven R. McDowell, Is Saudi Arabia a Nuclear Threat?, (Naval Postgraduate School, 2003).↩
- Ibid.↩
- James A. Russell, “Saudi Arabia in the 21st Century: A New Security Dilemma,” Middle East Policy, Fall 2005.↩
I don’t know whether this is something you planned on mentioning in your second installment but the KSA has another vulnerability that must concern them: the oil fields are in the north-east of the country, coincidentally the home of the KSA’s Shi’a minority.
So you’ve got southern Iraq with it’s largely Shi’ite population, Iran with its largely Shi’ite population, and the wealth-bearing old fields of the northeastern corner of the KSA—also with a Shi’ite population. That must concern the Sauds at least a bit.
[...] Before embarking on a guided tour of what others have said, I want to make my position perfectly clear. Under no circumstances should we allow Iran to become a nuclear power. That much destructive power in the hands of religious fanatics who confess that they prefer death to life is a recipe for disaster. Westerners who fail to take into account the religious factor in their predictions of how nuclear mullahs would behave1 are as muddled in their thinking as were those who believed that a Hitler-in-power would be far more moderate than was Hitler-in-Mein Kampf. Further, as I discussed in two recent posts, a nuclear Iran would touch off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia. Accordingly, if it should be the case that U.S. military action involving the use of tactical nuclear weapons is the only way to deny these weapons to the Iranians, I would support their employment. I say this fully recognizing that there would be substantial blowback, including public (but not necessarily private) condemnations by the governments of Islamic countries and massive anti-American demonstrations in such countries and in Western Europe. As disturbing as these events would be, the alternative would be worse. There are no good options, but some are worse than others. [...]
[...] Should U.S. policymakers follow his advice, disaster would likely ensue. Given the nature of the Iranian regime, it would be the height of folly to assume that the mullahs would decide not to employ the leverage their possession of nuclear weapons would give them. This leverage could be used in efforts to persuade other Middle East states to foreswear developing or acquiring nuclear arsenals. Should such threats be successful, Iran would become the dominant power in their neighborhood and be in a position to exert an economic stranglehold on the West. In what I think is the more likely scenario, one or more of its neighbors would react to Iran’s threats by acquiring, overtly or covertly, nuclear weapons. An “all-out” war (whatever that means) taking place after further proliferation would be worse than one taking place beforehand. More countries—in particular, more oil-producing countries—would be involved. If the only alternatives are those Fallows articulates, war is better than surrender, and a war that begins sooner is better than a war that begins later. ________________ My other recent posts relating to Iran: The Fallout From an Iranian Bomb I (April 3) The Fallout From an Iranian Bomb II (April 5) What Do the Saudis See? (April 6) Iran: Nuclear Update (April 7) Nothing Like a Shared Threat (April 7) Hersh Strikes Again (April 9) Iran: The Clock Is Ticking (April 11) Steyn Shines (April 11) This entry is filed under Iran, Nuclear Proliferation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave a Reply [...]
Cool Stuff…
Cool Stuff…