The Saudi nuclear program: what else did anyone expect?

 

I'm cynically amused by the brouhaha over the US deal with Saudi Arabia to help that country develop a peaceful - underline, peaceful - nuclear energy program, including (it seems) enriching nuclear fuel.

Consider the facts of the current situation, in no particular order.

• Saudi Arabia bankrolled much of Pakistan's nuclear program, including its nuclear warheads and missiles.  It's long been rumored among "those in the know" that Pakistan has guaranteed Saudi Arabia that it can have nuclear warheads at twenty-four hours' notice, in an emergency.
• Saudi Arabia has bought Chinese ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.  By strange coincidence, they're the same type of ballistic missiles that Pakistan has in its nuclear silos.  Odd, that . . .
• Iran has launched missile attacks on Saudi Arabian territory from the north, using cruise and ballistic missiles.  Its Houthi allies have done the same from Yemen in the south.  That would be enough to make any nation a little paranoid.  What if the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic Guard, or whatever it calls itself these days, were to figure out how to put nuclear payloads on those missiles - either a full-blown nuke warhead, or a "dirty nuke" using conventional explosives to spread radioactive material around, say, Riyadh or a major military base?
• Israel has for decades maintained that it will neither confirm nor deny that it has nuclear weapons.  Anyone with two working brain cells to rub together is quite confident that they have more than a few, almost certainly including major thermonuclear weapons.  See my comments in these pages from time to time concerning the so-called "Vela incident".
• Given those various and sundry realities and threats, it was obvious that Saudi Arabia was going to go ahead and greatly expand its nuclear program(s).  It didn't really have any choice but to do so, if it was to survive in an environment like that.

That being the case, why is anybody surprised that President Trump would try to get involved with Saudi Arabia's plans and help them along?  Saudi was going to do it anyway.  We could have sat there and criticized, or expressed concern, or whatever - which would have bounced off Saudi's national interests like water off a duck's back.  This was a case of making the best of two very difficult and unpalatable choices, and I think the President acted wisely.  I'm sure he, and the US establishment, would rather not have made that choice, but as I said earlier, this was going to happen whether or not we were involved.

As for the fat-headed reports that the President was/is at odds with his Energy Secretary over what was done, and how it was done . . . yeah, right.  As if any Secretary in the President's cabinet is going to land a surprise like that on his boss's desk, without so much as a "by your leave"!  Sure, there may have been friction in the give-and-take between the White House and the Energy Department, but what else is new?  The very fact that the Energy Secretary still has his job is sufficient evidence that any such friction was relatively minor.

I'm also enjoying outraged suggestions from the left that the President is trying to stretch the agreement in new ways by pressuring Saudi Arabia to accept the Abraham Accords in exchange for US nuclear help.  There's nothing new in this:  President Trump has been trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to sign on to the Accords ever since he took office.  It might be a very useful talking point to mention that if Israel finds Saudi Arabia diplomatically cooperative, some of the former's nuclear warheads may no longer needed to be targeted at the Arabian peninsula.  In Saudi's position, I'd find that a very thought-provoking consideration . . .

Overall, I think America joining Saudi's nuclear program as a partner nation has far more positives than negatives.  It will also make Iran rethink its nuclear ambitions, given that the existing Saudi-Pakistan nuclear relationship might put them between two actinic fires, so to speak.

What's next in the Middle East?  Your guess is as good as mine . . . but it's likely to be "interesting", in the sense of the fabled ancient Chinese curse!

Peter