A senior Saudi Arabian diplomat and member of the ruling royal family has raised the specter of nuclear conflict in the Middle East if Iran comes close to developing a nuclear weapon.
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.”
He did not state explicitly what these policies would be, but a senior official in Riyadh who is close to the prince said on Wednesday 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 Saudi Arabia would reluctantly push ahead with its own civilian nuclear program.
Peaceful use of nuclear power, Turki said, was the right of all nations. He was speaking earlier this month at an unpublicized meeting at Royal Air Force Molesworth, the airbase in Cambridgeshire, England, used by NATO as a center for gathering and collating intelligence on the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
According to a transcript of his speech, Turki told his audience Iran was a “paper tiger with steel claws” that was “meddling and destabilizing” across the region.
“Iran ... is very sensitive about other countries meddling in its affairs, but it should treat others like it expects to be treated,” Turki said. “The kingdom expects Iran to practice what it preaches.”
Turki holds no official post in Saudi Arabia, but is seen as an ambassador at large for the kingdom and a potential foreign minister.
Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and published by the Guardian last year revealed that King Abdullah, who has ruled Saudi Arabia since 2005, had privately warned Washington in 2008 that if Iran developed nuclear weapons, “everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia.”
Saudi Arabian diplomats and officials have launched a campaign in recent weeks to rally global and regional powers against Iran, fearful that Tehran is exploiting the “Arab Spring” to gain influence in the region and in the kingdom itself.
Turki also accused Iran of interfering in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Bahrain, where Saudi troops were deployed this year as part of a Gulf Cooperation Council force following widespread protests from those calling for greater democratic rights.
Though there has been little public comment from Riyadh on developments in Syria, Turki told his audience at Molesworth that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “will cling to power till the last Syrian is killed.”
Syria presents a dilemma for Saudi policymakers: Although they would prefer not to see popular protest unseat another regime, they view the Damascus regime, dominated by Syria’s Shia minority, as a proxy for Iran.
“The loss of life [in Syria] in the present internal struggle is deplorable. The government is woefully deficient in its handling of the situation,” Turki said at Molesworth on June 8.
Senior officials at the Ministry of Interior in Riyadh said Iran was using ideology to “penetrate” the Arabian peninsula “in the same way al-Qaeda did.”
Turki also reiterated a long-standing Saudi call for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, which would include both Iran and Israel and would be enforced by the UN.
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