Are Saudi Arabia and Egypt Nuclear Powers?

[Guest guest]

Are Saudi Arabia and Egypt Nuclear Powers?  

The Iran issue is turning into the perfect excuse for Saudi Arabia 

to declare its Nuclear assests and expand its Islamic Nuclear 

Umbrella. 

One up for Tehran in Its Secret Bout with Washington  

>From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 250 Updated by DEBKAfile  

April 26, 2006, 3:09 PM (GMT+02:00)  

  

'To lay the groundwork for an alternative Middle East nuclear bloc  

hinging on Saudi Arabia and Egypt, i.e. a rival Arab nuclear  

program. Iran was meant to be brought up short by the discovery that  

if it goes all the way to an N- bomb, so too will its Arab opposite  

numbers. This race carries the extreme potential of pitting Sunni  

and Shiite nuclear powers on a collision course.'  

  

Tehran was undaunted when US officials confronted its negotiators  

in secret talks with the steps taken by Saudi Arabia and Egypt to  

launch their own nuclear weapons programs as a deterrent to the  

Iranian threat. Iran’s leaders countered the prospect of a

Middle  

East arms race with a string of barefaced comments and threats  

against the United States, described by the State Department  

spokesman Tuesday, April 15, as a serious escalation of the crisis.   

Monday, April 24, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said:

“There  

is no need for US-Iranian talks.”   

The next day, Iran’s powerful nuclear negotiator and head of

its  

Supreme Security Council, Alil Larijani, said Tehran would suspend  

ties with the UN nuclear watchdog and speed up its atomic program if  

the UN Security Council imposed sanctions. Larijani also threatened  

to hit oil installations in two Central Asian states in reprisal for  

any American attack.   

Finally, Wednesday, Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali

Khamenei,  

promised the Americans a blow of “double intensity” in

response to a  

US attack on its nuclear installations.   

According to DEBKAfile’s Iran experts, Tehran feels confident  

enough to adopted a belligerent posture because -   

1. Although US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad broke off the Iraq talks  

with an Iranian delegation in Baghdad, Tehran is confident that its  

influence in Iraqi politics outweighs Washington’s by virtue

of its  

ties with Iraqi parties and Shiite militias and its intelligence  

network. The Iranians are therefore letting the US-backed Jawad  

al-Maliki take over as prime minister because they believe they hold  

the key to the crucial defense and interior appointments. They  

expect pro-Tehran SCIRI leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim to land these  

jobs for Badr Organization commanders, preferably Abdel Mahdi, all  

of whose top echelon are under Tehran’s thumb.   

2. The threat by Ahmadinejad to quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty,  

also hinted at by Larijani, is an indicator of Tehran’s  

dissatisfaction with the progress of its secret diplomatic track  

with Washington – first in the US capital, then at an

undisclosed  

venue in Europe. Iran’s negotiating tactics are guided by the  

presumption that no accord is possible with the United States on the  

nuclear issue; but diplomacy of any form is to be encouraged to buy  

time for progress in its program in a better international climate.   

3. Tehran is increasingly confident that Moscow and Beijing will  

continue to block Washington’s initiatives for UN Security

Council  

sanctions - as they did in the case of Bashar Assad’s Syria.   

4. As perceived from Iran, the Bush administration is losing ground  

in the Middle East, whereas the Islamic Republic is in the middle of  

a forward thrust – and not only in Iraq. Iran’s allies,

Syrian  

president Assad and Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah, have been

able to  

wriggle off the international hook. The Americans, French and United  

Nations were not able to make the Shiite terror group give up its  

weapons and disband; the Palestinian jihadist Hamas is not only in  

power, but its heads are intensifying the movement’s rapport

with  

the Iranian regime, a major coup for Tehran.   

On April 21, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive sources and

analysts  

attempted to pierce the dense blackout cast over the  

Washington-Tehran talks.   

Last week, the head of the White House National Security Council  

Stephen Hadley sent his senior deputies to meet in Washington with  

Mohammad Nahavandian, adviser on economic and technology issues to  

Ali Larijani, the lead Iranian nuclear negotiator.   

US sources say Nahavandian entered the US around April 6 and stayed  

for an unspecified time.   

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources, he got

together  

with American officials on April 17. Rumors going around the US  

capital the next day about the arrival of a high-ranking Iranian  

official brought forth a statement by State Department spokesman  

Sean McCormack that no visa had been issued for Nahavandian. The  

spokesman also denied any meetings with US government  

representatives.   

After this breach of secrecy, the talks were promptly moved to a  

West European capital where they are still going on – some

sources  

say with Hadley himself taking part.   

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s most reliable sources pieced together the

US  

objectives in the talks:   

1. To build a route detouring the faltering Baghdad track.   

2. To break the monopoly Moscow is striving to establish as the  

sole middleman for diplomacy between the West and Iran.   

3. To undo the former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani’s

pitch  

in a tour of Arab emirates which attempted to buy Gulf support by  

depicting his country’s nuclear enterprise as an Arab Nuclear  

Program.   

4. To lay the groundwork for an alternative Middle East nuclear  

bloc hinging on Saudi Arabia and Egypt, i.e. a rival Arab nuclear  

program. Iran was meant to be brought up short by the discovery that  

if it goes all the way to an N- bomb, so too will its Arab opposite  

numbers. This race carries the extreme potential of pitting Sunni  

and Shiite nuclear powers on a collision course.   

The American delegation proposed that Tehran be satisfied with the  

sensation it caused by its uranium enrichment bombshell and abandon  

its centrifuges and weapons program.   

If not, Washington would deliver threefold punishment: A. The heat  

would be maintained for UN Security Council sanctions; B. The Saudi  

and Egyptian nuclear programs would be allowed to move forward. And  

if Tehran started building a weapon, both these Arab states would  

either produce or buy a nuclear weapon from countries like Pakistan.  

C. The US would line up a nuclear-armed Middle East front, including  

Israel, against Iran. Moscow and Beijing might then rethink their  

support for the Islamic Republic and weigh its worth against lost  

points in the Arab world and Persian Gulf.   

Tehran’s clerical rulers did not back down in the face of the  

American ultimatum.   

They adopted four courses, revealed here by

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s  

Iranian sources:   

1. Supreme ruler Khamenei, while leaving the shrill rhetoric to  

president Ahmadinejad, tightened his grip on the national nuclear  

program and cut the president out of the ongoing diplomatic talks  

with the Americans.   

2. Rafsanjani took over dealings on the Iraq issue and relations  

with Arab governments, while Larijani was put in charge of contacts  

with the Americans, the Russians and the Europeans.   

3. To balance the American track, Iran went into secret negotiation  

with Moscow on a new Russian plan for international oversight of its  

enrichment activities.   

4. Rafsanjani was dispatched on a tour of the Arab emirates to calm  

their fears of Iran’s nuclear motives and invite them to lend

their  

support to its nuclear option. Our Gulf sources report that he  

failed in his mission. Aside from Damascus, which was his last stop,  

the emirates presented a solid wall of resistance to any suggestion  

of an Iranian nuclear bomb.  

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