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Iran Nuclear Deal May Ignite Arab Arms Race

(The Hill) Yoel Guzansky - UAE ambassador to Washington Yousef al-Otaiba told a Carnegie conference last week that the UAE is not pleased with its nuclear compact. Iran got a better nuclear deal than us, he said, and "it continues to keep its uranium enrichment program, while we made a commitment to forgo uranium enrichment." The first of four UAE civilian nuclear reactors is scheduled to be operational in a few months. Four other Middle Eastern countries are in different stages of their own independent nuclear program - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Since the nuclear deal permits Iran to pursue unrestricted uranium enrichment in the future, other countries in the region have justification for their own enrichment programs. The Saudis have embarked on an ambitious nuclear plan involving no fewer than 16 nuclear reactors. The kingdom has also signed nuclear cooperation agreements with South Korea, Russia and China. Iran's Arab neighbors, who are demanding to match Iran's nuclear capability, will likely continue to develop their nuclear programs in what seems like a regional, below-the-radar, slow-motion, nuclear arms race. The writer, a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
2017-03-28 00:00:00
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