Good news: If Iran builds nuclear weapons, so will the Saudis
Former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to the United States Turki al-Faisal warned NATO that if Iran builds nuclear weapons, his country will too. Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington, warned senior Nato military officials that the existence of such a device "would compel Saudi Arabia … to pursue policies which could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences".Funny how the Saudis seem a lot more concerned about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon than they are about an Israeli one.
He did not state explicitly what these policies would be, but a senior official in Riyadh who is close to the prince said yesterday his message was clear.
"We cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don't. It's as simple as that," the official said. "If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, that will be unacceptable to us and we will have to follow suit."
Officials in Riyadh said that Saudi Arabia would reluctantly push ahead with its own civilian nuclear programme. Peaceful use of nuclear power, Turki said, was the right of all nations.
Turki was speaking earlier this month at an unpublicised meeting at RAF Molesworth, the airbase in Cambridgeshire used by Nato as a centre for gathering and collating intelligence on the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
According to a transcript of his speech obtained by the Guardian, Turki told his audience that Iran was a "paper tiger with steel claws" that was "meddling and destabilising" across the region.
How's that nuclear disarmament going Barack?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Iranian nuclear threat, nuclear disarmament, Saudi Arabia
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:28 PM
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