Saudi Nuclear Deal Raises Stakes for Iran Talks

WASHINGTON – As U.S. and Iranian diplomats inched toward progress on Tehran’s nuclear program last week, Saudi Arabia quietly signed its own nuclear-cooperation agreement with South Korea.

That agreement, along with recent comments from Saudi officials and royals, is raising concerns on Capitol Hill and among U.S. allies that a deal with Iran, rather than stanching the spread of nuclear technologies, risks fueling it.

Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a member of the royal family, has publicly warned in recent months that Riyadh will seek to match the nuclear capabilities Iran is allowed to maintain as part of any final agreement reached with world powers. This could include the ability to enrich uranium and to harvest the weapons-grade plutonium discharged in a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel.

Several U.S. and Arab officials have voiced concerns about a possible nuclear-arms race erupting in the Middle East, spurred on by Saudi Arabia’s regional rivalry with Iran, which has been playing out in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen in recent months.

“The proliferation of nuclear technologies is a nightmare the White House would like to discount rather than contemplate,” said Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Washington think tank. “This is more than just an imaginary threat.”

The memorandum of understanding between Saudi Arabia and South Korea includes a plan to study the feasibility of building two nuclear reactors worth $2 billion in the Arab country over the next 20 years, according to Saudi state media.

Current and former U.S. officials said there is particular concern about Saudi Arabia’s decadeslong military alliance with Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with a history of proliferating military technologies.

A number of senior Arab officials have warned the White House in recent months the Saudi government could seek Pakistan’s aid in developing nuclear technologies—or even buy an atomic bomb—if it sees an agreement with Iran as too weak. Saudi officials have told successive U.S. administrations they expect to have Pakistan’s support in the nuclear field, if called upon, because of the kingdom’s massive financial support for the South Asian country.

“The Saudis privately say they can get help from Pakistan,” said Robert Einhorn, a former senior State Department official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, who took part in negotiations with Iran. “I’ve never seen evidence, though, that there is a formal understanding.”

A U.S. diplomatic cable from December 2007, published by WikiLeaks, quoted Pakistan officials saying it was “logical for the Saudis to step in as the physical ‘protector’ ” of Sunni countries in response to the threat posed by Iran, a Shiite-majority nation. Saudi Arabia, unlike Egypt, another Arab power, has the finances to develop a nuclear-weapons arsenal, the Pakistanis argue.

“Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are friends of last resort,” said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., now at Washington’s Hudson Institute. “And while there is nothing in the public domain to document Saudi Arabia’s and Pakistan’s cooperation, it wouldn’t be something beyond the breadth of the relationship.”

Members of the Saudi royal family and government have been critical of the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran that are aimed at concluding a deal to constrain Tehran’s nuclear program by a late March deadline.

U.S. officials say Tehran will be allowed to maintain the technologies to produce nuclear fuel as part of any agreement, though in a limited capacity and under strict international monitoring. The enrichment of uranium can be used by a country both to create fuel for a nuclear reactor, but also the fissile core of an atomic bomb.