Saudi Arabia asking Pakistan for nuclear weapons: Sunday Times

LAHORE: Saudi Arabia has been in discussion with Pakistan over the acquisition of a nuclear weapon, according to US sources.

“For the Saudis, the moment has come,” an anonymous former US defence official told the UK’s Sunday Times.

“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.”

He denied “any actual weaponry has been transferred yet”, but warned that “the Saudis mean what they say and they will do what they say”.

Saudi Arabia has long regarded Iran’s nuclear programme with alarm and has insisted that it would attempt to match any military threat from the country.

“Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” former Saudi intelligence head Prince Turki bin Faisal said last month at a conference held by the South Korean-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies, according to the New York Times, adding that any deal between Iran and the West over their nuclear programme “opens the door to nuclear proliferation, not closes it, as was the initial intention”.

“Nuclear weapons programmes are extremely expensive and there’s no question that a lot of the funding of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme was provided by Saudi Arabia,” Lord David Owen, who served as England’s foreign secretary from 1977-1979, told the Sunday Times.

“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.”

An anonymous UK military official told the Sunday Times that Western military leaders “all assume the Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear” and warned that this could spur on others.

“The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers – Turkey and Egypt – may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race.”