IRIA News

Saudi Arabia has made a “strategic decision” to purchase “off-the-shelf” nuclear weapons from Pakistan, a US official says.

At the prospect of the international community’s nuclear deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia has reportedly taken a decision to call in an old favor from Pakistan and get some of its nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia is widely believed to have bankrolled the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. In exchange, Riyadh reportedly expects Islamabad to provide missiles in times of trouble to defend the kingdom.

“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former American defense official told The Sunday Times newspaper. “There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis, and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

According to the report, no actual transfer of weapons has taken place yet, but “the Saudis mean what they say and they will do what they say,” the source reportedly said.

“Hundreds of people at [CIA headquarters in] Langley” were trying to discover if Islamabad had already supplied the Persian Gulf nation with nuclear technology or arms, another unnamed US intelligence official said.

Over the past three decades Saudi Arabia has financed considerable amounts of Islamabad’s nuclear program and provided it with billions of dollars of subsidized oil.

“Given their close relations and close military links, it’s long been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads,” British former Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen was quoted as saying.

Western military leaders “all assume the Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear,” he added.

Royal Saudi Land Forces and units of Special Forces of the Pakistani army take part in a joint military exercise (Photo: SPA)

Over the past year, the Saudi kingdom increased its arms imports by 54 percent.

“Growth in Saudi Arabia has been dramatic and, based on previous orders, these numbers are not going to slow down,” RT quoted IHS expert Ben Moores as saying.

The report comes a month ahead of a meeting between Tehran and the P5+1 group to finalize a deal, which would lift sanctions from Iran in exchange for making its nuclear program more transparent and restricted. Key US allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are objecting to the deal, saying it would ultimately allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Reports of Saudi Arabia getting nukes aren’t new. In November 2013, BBC’s Newsnight reported on the alleged nuclear sharing agreement between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The program cited Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, telling a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, “the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.”

The speculation came just as nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 were showing progress in Geneva.

Some experts, however, doubted that the supposed nuclear arming by Saudi Arabia was as simple as calling in the debt.

“I doubt that Pakistan is ready to send nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies,told the Guardian at the time.

“Pakistan’s reputation suffered greatly the last time they assisted other countries with nuclear weapons technology (i.e., the sales by [Pakistani nuclear project chief] A.Q. Khan, with some governmental support or at least acquiescence, to North Korea, Iran and Libya). Pakistan knows that transferring nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia would also incur huge diplomatic and reputational costs.”

The potential of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by the Iran deal is one of the argument critics use to denigrate the talks. At the moment there are several countries in the region known or believed to have nuclear weapons.

Pakistan has a stockpile of 80 to 120 warheads designed to counterbalance India’s arsenal, while Turkey hosts NATO nuclear weapons. Israel is said to have a stockpile, although it has never officially confirmed this.

Several other nations have civilian nuclear programs, including Iran, Egypt and UAE.