Saudis Considering Letting Pakistan Station Nuclear Weapons Because of Iranian Nuke Deal

As the first round of nuclear talks got under way on Nov. 7 in Geneva, select leaks to the Western media suggested that Saudi Arabia was planning to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan. A month before, former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got a bomb, “the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.”

There may be truth to Yadlin’s comments. Saudi Arabia has backed and at times helped fund Pakistan’s nuclear program, according to proliferation experts. (The program became public in 1998.) That doesn’t mean that acquiring a nuclear bomb is as easy as shipping it across the Arabian Sea. Saudi, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would risk global reproach, possible sanctions and the launch of a regional arms race if it had its own bomb. A more likely scenario, says Gary Samore, Obama’s former arms control advisor and Director for Research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, would be some sort of pact that could see Pakistani nuclear weapons moved to Saudi Arabia. “Even if U.S. diplomacy fails and Iran gets nuclear weapons, Pakistan isn’t just going to hand over nuclear weapons; it’s more likely that Pakistan would station forces in Saudi, and those forces will have the ability to deploy nuclear weapons from Saudi soil,”­— much like American troops are able to do in Europe, with out contravening those country’s non-proliferation treaties.

Still, such a pact would have significant drawbacks, points out Gause. Pakistan may not be willing to attack its neighbor Iran for fear of repercussions, and it would be a death-knell for the U.S.-Saudi friendship. “In terms of putting at risk relations with the United States, a Pakistani nuclear pact would be the most provocative Saudi foreign policy decision since the 1973 oil embargo,” says Gause. That might serve Saudi pique at being sidelined by its old ally America as that ally pursues a lasting deal with Iran, but it would be ultimately self-defeating. Better for Saudi in the long run would be a deal that brings Iran closer to the U.S., and further from a bomb.

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Watch and see.  We might be witnessing a beginning of a new shift in power.  Pakistan as a guaranteer of Saudi Arabia is a pretty profound change... and if Pakistani nukes were there, India's position would shift, too.  And the US as well.