Riyadh took up the creation of nuclear weapons?
Under pressure from the “hawks”, the Saudi monarch Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz is going to launch a military atomic program in Saudi Arabia to contain Tehran, according to a French newsletter Intelligence Online. According to the French edition, at the beginning of August 2011, without much publicity, a group of US Department of Energy officials visited the Kingdom to meet with Dr. H. Yamani, head of the King Abdullah Center for Atomic and Renewable Energy. The talks between the Americans and the Saudis concerned the implementation of the agreement between Washington and Riyadh, signed in 2008, on cooperation in the field of atomic energy. As in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, in Saudi Arabia they want to build a nuclear power plant to insure the country from the consequences of the exhaustion of oil reserves. But this civilian program is only a cover-up, for military purposes, the French consider.
On this issue in Saudi Arabia, since 2006, two parties have been confronted within the political elite. The first is the Saudi hawks, led by the country's defense minister, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdelaziz, and the former high-ranking official of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Prince Turki al-Faisal. They advocate the development of a secret atomic program in cooperation with Islamabad. The second group is headed by Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal and the head of the Interior Ministry. They are against this adventure and want to protect the Kingdom with an overseas missile defense umbrella, with the help of the United States. In recent months, the Saudi "hawks" have strengthened their positions, indicating their point of view to the monarch, who is believed to be ready to give in to their pressure. Perhaps the situation has been moved from the dead center by the “Arab Spring”, which destabilized the entire Middle East region. Saudi elite want to strengthen their positions with nuclear weapons.
Back in 1980, the Kingdom participated in the financing of the Pakistani nuclear program in exchange for the promise of Islamabad to cooperate in the future. In 2004, Deputy Defense Minister H. Bin Sultan made a visit to the Kahuta Research Laboratory, which is Pakistan’s main center for the production of nuclear weapons, and in 2006, his father visited the laboratory.
In the summer, a group of nuclear scientists from Pakistan visited Riyadh, covering their mission with pilgrimages. According to Intelligence Online, Pakistani scientists met with the entourage of Prince B. Bin Sultan, the head of the national security council. The prince is a supporter of the secret atomic program of Saudi Arabia, and in July he paid a visit to Kazakhstan, where he met with the leadership of the national uranium mining company Kazatomprom.
According to MIGnews.com, the Saudi authorities have repeatedly reported on their plans for the development of a peaceful atom. To this end, the science campus of atomic and renewable energy of the monarch Abdullah was created in the country. The United States is ready to cooperate in this direction with Riyadh. At the same time, Washington is pursuing a dual goal: on the one hand, multi-billion dollar contracts are shining on American corporations, and on the other hand, they hope in the White House that they will be able to control the development of the situation.
In June of this year, several high-ranking Saudi officials spoke about a possible “atomic” war in the Middle East region and presented an ultimatum, saying that they were ready to start building their own nuclear weapons if Iran received nuclear weapons.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, who served as the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States, warned several senior figures of the North Atlantic Alliance. He said that the existence of nuclear weapons in Iran "will force Saudi Arabia ... to pursue a policy that could lead to unspeakable and possibly tragic consequences." Another Saudi official said that Riyadh can not exist in an environment where Tehran has nuclear weapons, but they do not.
According to the documents of the US State Department staff correspondence, they were published by the Wikileaks website in 2010, Saudi King Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz even warned the White House in 2008 that if Tehran creates nuclear weapons, then “everything in the region will do the same, including Saudi Arabia ".
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