On Blaming Iran For Region's Nuclear Race

By Cernig

There's a report in today's New York Times about the current Middle East scurry to develop nuclear power - and, of course, the scapegoat is Iran.

Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors.

So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast. In all, roughly a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting their own nuclear programs. While interest in nuclear energy is rising globally, it is unusually strong in the Middle East.

“The rules have changed,” King Abdullah II of Jordan recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Everybody’s going for nuclear programs.”

The Middle East states say they only want atomic power. Some probably do. But United States government and private analysts say they believe that the rush of activity is also intended to counter the threat of a nuclear Iran.

I'm calling foul on this one. The article is misleading from the very first line.

The Saudis may have told the IAEA two years ago that they had no interest in nuclear power, but if they were being truthful then it was only a temporary change of mind and they have now changed back again. In 1975, a full decade before the current Iranian program had even begun, indeed before even the Iranian Islamic revolution, the Saudis were trying to aquire nuclear weapons by back-door routes. In July 1994, a defecting Saudi diplomat expert, Mohammed Khilewi, revealed the extent of Saudi nuclear efforts.

Khilewi says that the Saudi program, based at a military complex in Al-Suleiyel, began with the recruitment of nuclear experts and the establishment of a "nuclear library," with scientific information on the technology of nuclear weapons programs in other countries. Saudi Arabia then began financing Pakistan's nuclear program as part of a security arrangement, but soon Saudi Arabia became more interested in obtaining a nuclear device of its own.

Khilewi disclosed that nuclear and miltary cooperation between Saudi Arabia and _Iraq_ dates as far back as 1985. Saudi Arabia agreed to finance an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, designed to produce weapons-grade material, in return for Iraqi-designed nuclear weapons and technology. Khilewi estimates that of the $25 billion that was designated to aid Iraq in its war with Iran, at least $5 billion was set aside for the Iraqi nuclear program. However, with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the Saudi-Iraqi nuclear alliance collapsed.

That wasn't all.

On 5 August 1994, former Saudi diplomat Mohammed A. al-Khilewi asserted that in 1989 Saudi Arabia attempted to purchase nuclear research reactors from China and a US company in an effort to obtain nuclear weapons. Khilewi provided a letter dated 10 January 1989 from the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation to Prince Abdel Rahman stating that it would be willing to sell small research reactors, known as miniature neutron source reactors, to Saudi Arabia. On 5 February 1994, Prince Abdel Rahman sent a letter to a senior official at Riyadh University concerning a visit to Chinese nuclear facilities and describing the need for a "nuclear reactor and training program" in Saudi Arabia. Khilewi also provided a letter dated 16 May 1989, from a senior official at the King Abdel Aziz City for Science and Technology to a US company, Marine Services Limited, confirming the receipt of "documents/specifications for a Miniature Neutron Source Reactor."

Not only that, Saudi Arabia already has a viable delivery method - something even the Iranians yet lack. The Federation of American Scientists notes that:

While the U.S. government vocally opposes the development or procurement of ballistic missiles by non-allies, it has been very quiet about the fact that Saudi Arabia possesses the longest-range ballistic missiles of any developing country. In February/March 1988, it was revealed that the Saudi regime had bought an estimated fifty CSS-2 missiles from China. The missiles can travel a distance of more than 1,500 miles and deliver a payload of over 4,000 lbs.

The CSS-2 missile is far too inaccurate to be of any military use as a conventionally-armed missile. It's only practical use is as a carrier of WMD warheads. Many readers will be more familiar with the name the North Koreans gave their CSS-2 missiles - the TaePongDo-2.

On June 16, 2005, Saudi Arabia signed the International Atomic Energy Agency Small Quantities Protocol.

The Protocol allows states considered to be of low risk to opt out of more intensive inspection regimes in return for a declaration of their nuclear activities. In addition, the Protocol allows for the possession of up to 10 tons of natural uranium or 20 tons of depleted uranium, and 2.2 pounds of plutonium without reporting. While it does not appear that Saudi Arabia aspires to develop a domestic weapons grade uranium or plutonium-processing ability, 10 tons of natural uranium is still enough by most standards to produce between one and four nuclear devices (depending on their design).

Oddly enough, that would be about the time that the NYT report says the Saudis were telling the IAEA they were uninterested in nuclear power. The same article, from the Center For Defense Information, continues:

several high-level exchanges between Saudi and Pakistani officials and a general warming of relations between these two countries points to Saudi Arabia not only having the intent, motivation, and impetus to procure nuclear weapons, but now also the means.

Interestingly enough, any nuclear threat Saudi Arabia may face from Iran may actually have been proliferated by those whose nuclear program was also funded by the Saudis and whose help the Saudis are now seeking: Pakistan. After the mid-1994 defection to the United States of a former Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Muhammad Khilewi, thousands of documents were uncovered, some of which hinted at an agreement by which Saudi Arabia partially funded Pakistan’s bomb project in exchange for retaliation with these nuclear weapons in the event of nuclear aggression against the Saudis.

The NYT's article is hoplessly misleading because it hasn't looked even at the Saudi backstory. It's amazing that the reporters, including White House favorite David Sanger, didn't ask their "independent" experts - a Reagan era NSA deputy and a Bush non-proliferation head, both now at think tanks, as well as two consultants for a group entirely owned by a Saudi tycoon - about the other side of the story. Or that those experts didn't volunteer it. Come to think of it, why is Israel's influence on the nuclear race in the region mentioned just briefly - and that to discount any such influence on the current situation.

The Middle East has seen hints of a regional nuclear-arms race before. After Israel obtained its first weapon four decades ago, several countries took steps down the nuclear road. But many analysts say it is Iran’s atomic intransigence that has now prodded the Sunni powers into getting serious about hedging their bets and, like Iran, financing them with $65-a-barrel oil.

...Decades ago, it was Israel’s drive for nuclear arms that brought about the region’s first atomic jitters.

Not a single mention that Israel's currently estimated 200 plus warheads and sophisticated delivery systems might have something to do with matters.

Yet despite these ommissions, or perhaps because of them, this NYT article is destined to be yet another strand - a causus belli de jour - in the mostly fictitious narrative for war with the "evil" that is Iran. Marc Schulman points the way without actually asking outright for war.

Avoiding nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East is the most important reason to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. The possibility of Sunni and Shi’a Muslims — enemies for more than 1,300 years — targeting each other with nuclear weapons is the most frightening future I can think of. Not next year or the year after. But maybe in time for the centennial of the First World War.

Marc might want to consider that we already have nuke-armed Hindus and Moslems, bitter enemies for just as long, facing each other across a common border. To me, that's just as scary. Even scarier, if you take into account Pakistan's record on proliferation and India's current attempts to have their cake and eat it too in nuclear deals with the US.

Update Note that the two new nuclear plants Iran has just announced it wants to build will be light-water reactors. Those are generally considered pretty much useless for weapons-grade material production.