Riyadh, June 30 (ANI): A Saudi Arabian official has warned that his country would not tolerate losing a nuclear arms race to Iran, and raised the spectre of nuclear conflict if Iran comes close to developing a nuclear weapon.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington, warned senior NATO military officials that the existence of such a device "would compel Saudi Arabia to pursue policies which could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences.
He did not state explicitly what these policies would be, but a senior official in Riyadh who is close to the prince said that his message was clear.
"We cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don't. It's as simple as that," the Guardian quoted the official, as saying.
"If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, that will be unacceptable to us and we will have to follow suit," the official added.
Officials in Riyadh said that Saudi Arabia would reluctantly push ahead with its own civilian nuclear program, the paper reports.
Turki was speaking earlier this month at an unpublicized meeting at RAF Molesworth, the airbase in Cambridgeshire used by NATO as a centre for gathering and collating intelligence on the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
According to a transcript of his speech obtained by the paper, Turki said that Iran was a "paper tiger with steel claws" that was "meddling and destabilising" across the region.
"Iran is very sensitive about other countries meddling in its affairs. But it should treat others like it expects to be treated. The kingdom expects Iran to practice what it preaches," Turki said.
Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and published by the Guardian last year revealed that King Abdullah, who has ruled Saudi Arabia since 2005, had privately warned Washington in 2008 that if Iran developed nuclear weapons "everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia". (ANI)
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