Saudi Ambassador: We Won’t Rule Out Making Nukes

Insists Saudis Will Never Negotiate Over Ability to Make Nukes

While US officials continue to obsess over Iran’s civilian nuclear program, despite the nation repeatedly ruling out ever creating nuclear arms from it, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States today, on US television, insisted his nation will never make a similar pledge.

“This is not something we would discuss publicly,” Ambassador al-Jubeir insisted during an interview on CNN, saying the decision to create nuclear weapons might be necessary for Saudi national security, and would never be negotiated over.

At a time when the US is going to great lengths to avoid nuclear proliferation, and great pains to pressure Iran, a nation which keeps disavowing militarization of its nuclear capabilities, overt talk from a non-nuclear state of its intentions to at least consider building such arms, ought to be cause for concern.

Yet so far, US officials seem not to be reacting to the Saudi comment at all, and given the long history of US officials giving the Saudis carte blanche to say and do whatever they want, they probably won’t. If any public comment is made at all, expect the US to blame the whole thing on Iran.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.