Nuclear energy; Saudi Arabia’s coming Washington battle
Nuclear energy; Saudi
Arabia’s coming Washington battle
By James M.
Dorsey
When Saudi General Khalid bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz went
shopping in the late 1980s for Chinese medium-range missiles capable of
carrying nuclear, chemical or biological warheads he made no bones about
keeping the United States, one of the kingdom’s closest allies, in the dark.
it was “my task to negotiate the deal, devise
an appropriate deception plan, choose a team of Saudi officers and
men and arrange for their training in both Saudi Arabia and China, build and
defend operation bases and storage facilities in different parts of the
kingdom, arrange for the shipment of the missiles from China and, at every
stage, be ready to defend the project against sabotage or any form of attack,”
General Bin Sultan, a son of the late Saudi crown prince and defense minister,
Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, and commander of the US-led international
alliance that forced Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait in 1991, recounted in his
memoire.
The incident coupled with more recent Saudi statements
and the kingdom’s inability to present from the outset a credible and
sustainable version of events surrounding the killing of journalist Jamal
Khashoggi on the premises of its Istanbul consulate is complicating it’s
negotiations with the United States for the acquisition of designs for nuclear
power plants, a
deal valued at up to US$80 billion depending on how many Saudi
Arabia ultimately decides to build.
Prospects of a massive deal go to the heart of US
President Donald J. Trump’s jobs and deals-focussed America First policy. Yet,
growing criticism and distrust of Saudi Arabia in the US Congress and
intelligence community as a result of the Khashoggi crisis and the kingdom’s
handling of the Yemen war that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian
crisis since World War Two are likely to strengthen efforts to thwart an
agreement that honours Saudi insistence on producing its own nuclear fuel, even
though it could buy it more cheaply abroad.
The Saudi insistence has fuelled concerns that the kingdom
may divert their fuel for military purposes. Those kinds of fears coupled with
Iran’s ballistic missile program drove world powers to first sanction Iran and
then conclude a 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear
program. Mr. Trump withdrew from the agreement earlier this year, charging that
it did not provide sufficient guarantees that Iran would not be able to develop
a nuclear weapon.
Democrats in the US Congress have described refusing
to sell Saudi Arabia nuclear technology as proper punishment for the killing of Mr.
Khashoggi that the kingdom insists was done without the knowledge of
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
While the Trump administration has
as yet not abandoned long-standing strict US nuclear export safeguards
to secure a deal with Saudi Arabia, it has also not unambiguously said that it
would uphold them.
Like with his
rejection of hard-hitting sanctions in the wake of the Khashoggi killing,
Mr. Trump is likely to ultimately argue that if the United States does not
conclude a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, countries like China, Russia and
South Korea, that have less strict controls will. The argument amounts to the
equivalent of committing a wrong because if one doesn’t, someone else will.
Saudi officials have repeatedly insisted that the kingdom
is developing nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes such as medicine,
electricity generation, and desalination of sea water. They say that Saudi
Arabia is committed to putting its future facilities under the supervision of
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Yet, with a US$56 billion military budget for 2018, Saudi
Arabia is stepping up the development of a domestic military industry. The
kingdom aims to source
50% of its military procurement domestically by 2030, up from its
current two percent.
Speaking to CBS earlier this year, Prince Mohammed
appeared to put conditions on Saudi nuclear assurances by warning that “Saudi
Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt,
if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”
In putting forward demands for parity with
Iran by getting the right to controlled enrichment of uranium and the
reprocessing of spent fuel into plutonium, potential building blocks for
nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia was also seen as potentially backing away from
a 2009
memorandum of understanding with the United States in which it
pledged to acquire nuclear fuel from international markets.
Nuclear energy cooperation was one of a host of
agreements concluded last year by Saudi Arabia and China during a visit to
Beijing by Saudi King Salman. The agreement included a feasibility
study for the construction of high-temperature gas-cooled (HTGR) nuclear power
plants in the kingdom as well as cooperation in intellectual
property and the development of a domestic industrial supply chain for HTGRs
built in Saudi Arabia. The HTGR agreement built on an accord signed in 2012
that involved maintenance and development of nuclear power plants and research
reactors, as well as the provision of Chinese nuclear fuel.
A report by the Washington-based Institute for Science
and International Security (ISIS) released shortly after the king’s visit
warned that the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement had
“not eliminated the kingdom’s desire for nuclear weapons capabilities and even
nuclear weapons.”
Much like the era of General Bin Sultan, potential
Chinese sales to Saudi Arabia of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles remain
one of the murkier areas of Sino-Saudi military cooperation.
Military experts say that satellite imagery of missile
bases in Saudi Arabia in recent years and other open-source circumstantial
evidence, including Saudi press coverage of graduation ceremonies at the
kingdom’s Strategic Missile Force school in Wadi ad-Dawasir, attest
to ongoing transfers.
Saudi Arabia
in 2014 showcased Chinese-made Dongfeng-3 missiles that have a range
of up to 5,000 kilometres. Media reports said the missiles had been purchased
in 2007, possibly with US acquiescence.
“Saudi Arabia has invested
heavily in conventional ballistic and cruise missiles to provide the
kingdom a shot of strategic deterrence,” said non-proliferation expert Jeffrey
Lewis. Mr. Lewis’ conclusion was confirmed by Anwar Eshqi, a retired Saudi major
general and advisor to the Saudi military.
“The Saudi military did indeed receive
DF-21 missiles from China and the integration of the missiles,
including a full maintenance check and upgraded facilities, is complete, “ Mr. Eshqi
said referring to the People’s Republic’s East Wind solid-fuel, medium-range
ballistic missile.
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture,
and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast.
James is the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored
volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and
the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa
and just published China
and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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