Nuclear Inclusivity: Saudi Arabia’s new enrichment deal is another crack in a seven-decade-old illusion
Saudi Arabia has just wrangled a deal with the US to be ‘allowed’ to enrich nuclear fuel. It is for civilian power, but the technology can lead to a nuclear weapon. They might not really intend to have one at present but there is a caveat. Its ruler, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, has stated earlier that if Iran develops one, they would. The timing, right in the middle of the US-Iran war, suggests one of those calculated moves of a geopolitical game that usually never goes to plan.
The Saudis have even been given leeway to avoid inspection by international bodies, as per media reports. A small window has thus been opened in the Middle East for nuclear deterrence.
It strikes one more blow to the idea that a technology that can destroy civilisations, worlds and the entire Earth can be carefully contained. If survival and power are two ropes tugging at man, as a rational creature, he would choose survival. But he always chooses power because its rewards are immediate. Survival is something to be negotiated in future. The minute the US dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima, all chapters of the story were written. They didn’t expect others to get it for decades, the Soviet Union got its in five years. They didn’t expect small countries with dictators to get it. North Korea has it. They first rewarded Iran and then went to war with it to stop it from having one. It will get it, too, eventually. And now to prevent Iran being the sole power in the region to have it, others like Saudi Arabia are being provided with an option.
The recent Iran war has told every country it must have a nuclear weapon because it is the only deterrent against a superpower that does not even make excuses to attack other countries, like Venezuela and Iran. Not a single US missile or assassination threatens North Korea. Every tinpot dictator knows what he must get his hands on to not be under threat. He will get it too. Exclusivity of guns gave the West its empire once, petty criminals roam around with them today. All weapons of war filter down with time.