The nuclear debate

In the wake of the recent nuclear deal brokered between Iran and the P5+1, a number of influential journalists and academicians, in the mainstream US new media, are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal.
Terming the historic nuclear agreement a ‘foreign policy failure’, some analysts are even arguing about the possibility of Saudi Arabia developing nuclear weapons if Iran’s nuclear ambitions go unchecked. According to these analysts, Iran will not honour its nuclear deal promises and the Iranian government is probably capable of producing enough weapons-grade plutonium without detection.
While there is no scientific way to check the veracity of these claims, most debates regarding the Saudi intent to obtain nuclear weapons seem pointless at best and misleading at worst. Surprisingly, many well-known analysts and experts are just trying to score points off each other and there is a little reflection of constructive policy debate.
A few weeks ago, Fareed Zakaria, a columnist for the Washington Post, came up with a very strong article, spurning all concerns about fears of a renewed nuclear arms race in the region. In his article, while refraining from discussing technical aspects of nuclear proliferation, Zakaria concluded that Saudi Arabia will not be able to acquire nuclear capability in the foreseeable future.
In response to Fareed Zakaria’s article, Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Studies at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, came up with a misleading piece for Foreign Policy, another prominent media outlet. Dr Lewis’s view that “Saudi Arabia can build a bomb any damn time it wants to” is not simply naïve but is also symptomatic of an unfortunate trend toward agenda-driven research in the nuclear nonproliferation field.
One must agree with Dr Lewis that Zakaria uses ‘terrible indicators’ of a country’s ability to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. A country’s ability to build a car does not tell a lot about its ability to procure uranium enrichment. The truth that keeps getting ignored by Dr Lewis is that nuclear weapons are certainly not homemade toys which a country like Saudi Arabia can build any time. Saudi Arabia, with unimpressive scientific and technological performance, cannot even enrich enough weapons-grade uranium or plutonium for a single nuclear device in the next five years, not to mention the acquisition of a credible nuclear-arms capability.
Dr Lewis remains unable to build up a strong and affirmative case in support of his stance that Saudi Arabia can acquire a nuclear weapon any time soon. It is definitely true that Saudi Arabia has repeatedly declared its intentions to go nuclear if Iran does. Posturing aside, even Saudi Arabia knows they do not have the ability to get nuclear weapons.
There is a long way between the motivations to acquire nuclear weapons and actually make it possible. And all the available evidence suggests that Saudi Arabia will not be able to travel long distance and actually become a nuclear power within a decade. That is the very reason why Saudi Arabia has always supported the idea of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. The country acceded to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1988 as a non-nuclear weapons state and has never expressed its intentions to withdraw from the treaty.
In order to bolster his case, Dr Lewis gives examples of how Pakistan and India succeeded in building nuclear weapons but he conveniently forgets that it took these countries more than two decades to acquire nuclear capability. In these times, when there is a strong global support for a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons, the international community and the UN Security Council would never allow Saudi Arabia to go ahead with unchecked pursuit of nuclear weapons for so long.
After King Abdullah’s death, the autocratic government of Saudi Arabia has almost paralysed itself through internal power struggles and family feuds. The country needs support from the international community to resolve the rapidly worsening conflict in Yemen. The Arab media is already rife with speculations about the future of the ruling al-Saud brotherhood if the Islamic State succeeds in redrawing the Middle East map by fully occupying post-Al Assad Syria. Against this backdrop, any move to the effect of isolating their country should be the last thing on the agenda of risk-averse royals in Riyadh.
Contrary to Dr Lewis egregious claims, Saudi Arabia’s investment in its civil nuclear industry is not going to enable it to acquire nuclear weapons because the money is being spent to fulfil the country’s domestic energy needs. And even if Saudi Arabia, through some miracle, becomes a nuclear-weapons state overnight, it does not have the required nuclear infrastructure and scientific expertise to be able to maintain and use these weapons.
The fact is that some analysts are raising the spectre of further nuclear proliferation in the Middle East as part of a media campaign to build up public opinion in favour of a US attack on Iran. These analysts claim that Iran’s success in building nuclear weapons could trigger an arms race in the Middle East. But the US is selling F-15 jet fighters, Black Hawks and weapons of immense destructive capacity to other countries in the Middle East, besides Israel itself.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the presence of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world brings with it innumerable risks. But the fact that must not be overlooked is that the Obama administration has no plan B if military action fails to stop Iran’s nuclear-weapons programme.
And the western world, already clueless about the ongoing politico-military tensions in the Middle East, is not in a position to tackle the consequences of any such military misadventure. The US will have to handle the Iran situation very carefully, because any miscalculation could lead to a war with unimaginable consequences.
Email: rizwanasghar5@unm.edu