Lurking in the Shadows of Netanyahu’s Peace Celebrations – the Saudi Nuclear Dangers
Since its establishment, Israel has striven for peace. In his speech at the UN General Assembly last week, and in media interviews, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia could be reached within the next few months. He described the current negotiations as a quantum leap that would once and for all bring down the walls of enmity and create a breakthrough to comprehensive peace with Arab states.
But the peace and normalization utopia is not the whole story. Achieving peace is first and foremost a state’s concrete strategic goal for which it would be ready for significant territorial and strategic concessions: the end of the conflict and of the state of war. Menachem Begin summed up the meaning of peace in a short sentence at the signing ceremony of the peace agreement with Egypt: no more war, no more bloodshed. This is the strategic lens through which we should examine a peace agreement.
To date, Israel has signed only two peace agreements – with Egypt and with Jordan. In spite of Netanyahu’s statements and declarations, the Abraham Accords are not peace agreements. They have not ended a state of war. There is still nothing in media reports that can lead us to believe that with Saudi Arabia we are on the verge of a third peace agreement. Saudi Arabia is a country with whom we have no common border and no territorial conflict for which we would have to make significant territorial concessions.
The only territorial item in the peace negotiations with Saudi Arabia is in the Palestinian arena. And on this issue, neither the Saudi nor the Israeli position is clear. The list of questions and uncertainties is long. Will Saudi Arabia insist on the implementation of the 2002 Saudi Peace Initiative conditions for a peace agreement – two states on the 1967 borders? Is the Netanyahu government capable of accepting these territorial conditions? Will Saudi Arabia make do with cosmetic concessions vis a vis the Palestinians which would make the Israeli side very happy? Is Israel willing to concede to Saudi Arabia’s nuclear demands in return for an exemption from the need to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians? The Palestinian issue is the only territorial item in the story, an essential element in any peace agreement. The concept of “peace for peace” does not exist in the realm of international relations.
The Saudi peace is getting more and more complicated in the face of the conditions that Saudi Arabia is presenting to the US in return for its willingness to recognise Israel and sign a peace agreement with her: to receive US approval for a wide ranging civilian nuclear programme that would include a complete nuclear fuel cycle and uranium enrichment on Saudi soil. Uranian enrichment on its soil is an inseparable part of Saudi Arabia’s declared national nuclear doctrine.
For Israel, acceptance of the Saudi condition is full of risks in the nuclear domain and is the only one with existential significance. This would be a watershed moment and dramatic turning point in Israel’s national security doctrine. In conditions of uncertainty and regime instability, uranium enrichment at a civilian level (LEU) on Saudi soil is liable to be serve as a platform for a quick route to high level military uranium enrichment (HEU) for fissile material for nuclear weapons. And in the background, we have Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Prince bin Salman’s declaration that if Iran attains nuclear weapons, his country will immediately act in the same way. In the face of the Saudi nuclear program under the auspices of the US government, Israel would find it difficult to implement the “Begin doctrine” according to which Israel reserves itself the right of freedom of action to prevent countries in the Middle East from developing nuclear weapons.
Acceptance of the Saudi condition of “peace in return for uranium enrichment” could serve as a dangerous nuclear precedent. It could also lead to the opening of a pandora’s box and similar requests for uranium enrichment from other Middle Eastern states. This could lead to cracks in and the eventual disintegration of the NPT regime and world order which stopped global nuclear proliferation. The NPT is the most universal treaty in the world and has been signed by nearly all the countries in the world. It is a treaty which Israel has not signed, but paradoxically Israel has been one of its major beneficiaries in recent decades.
A regional nuclear arms race would mean the loss of Israel’s nuclear monopoly. This would require a dramatic conceptual change both in Israel and the US regarding Israel’s decades long nuclear ambiguity policy. US support for the nuclear ambiguity policy in international forums (which means support for Israel’s unique strategic position) was forged with the “Golda Meir-Nixon Understandings” in 1969 during the Cold War. This support was possible and continues to this day in spite of the robust US policy on nuclear non-proliferation because of the US assumption that this is a temporary policy until the peace agreements are achieved between Israel and the Arab countries.
Achieving peace and normalization with Saudi Arabia is very important. But should it be at the price of the nuclear precedent described above and the dangers it entails to Israel’s national security, both in the military and the conceptual fields, in relation to the ambiguity policy which is central to Israel’s security doctrine? It is not clear whether Netanyahu held orderly discussions in the security cabinet or to what extent he consulted with the Israeli experts in charge of these areas – the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, the IDF General Staff, Military Intelligence, the Mossad – when he sent his personal envoy Ron Dermer on his semi secret missions to the Biden administration. Defence community sources told military reporters that they had not been updated on the details of the negotiations on the agreement with Saudi Arabia nor they were asked for their professional assessment before Netanyahu’s trip to the US. According to reports, they are inclined to oppose a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia for the reasons that I have discussed here. It appears to have been a last moment decision on Netnayahu’s part to take a representative of the Atomic Energy Commission and the head of the Mossad David Barnea with him to the US.
The criticism that had been voiced in closed forums of experts in the strategic field, and surprisingly also in media appearances by retired Atomic Energy Commission senior officials (for example, the former directors general of the Atomic Energy Commission Gideon Frank and Shaul Chorev) intensified when Netanyahu and Dermer’s attempts to sweeten the bitter pill of the security dangers of the Saudi deal came to light. The deepened opposition to the Saudi deal followed a leak to the Wall Street Journal according to which Netanyahu was inclined to support the Saudi demand to enrich uranium on its soil. In this framework, Prime Minister Netanyahu instructed Israeli experts in the nuclear field (apparently members of the Atomic Energy Commission which is subordinate to him) to participate in contacts with the US in order to find a formulation that would enable uranium enrichment on Saudi soil in a facility that would be under US control.
It is not clear to what extent Netanyahu’s formula for a “US run uranium enrichment operation” in Saudi Arabia is technologically feasible and to what extent it would be trustworthy. It is also not clear that the Saudis would agree to US control over a nuclear facility in their territory intended to increase their prestige in the world. Furthermore, the Saudis could bypass the US control. For example, they could nationalise the US corporation which would operate the uranium enrichment, and transfer it to their control as they did with the US oil corporation Aramco. In addition, uranium enrichment in Saudi Arabia stands in contradiction to US legislation the 123 Agreements which ban uranium enrichment and plutonium separation on the soil of countries who purchase nuclear reactors from the US.
The US will undoubtedly request that the Saudis undertake to abide by Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act. This is the gold standard that the US administration would like to see enshrined in international relations. The US would have to remain particularly alert since the Saudis have not hidden and have even publicly declared their intention to attain nuclear weapons on the very day that Iran obtains them.
And to conclude – another Saudi nuclear paradox. From a pure strategic analytical point of view, a possible solution to the package deal of “Saudi peace for a Saudi nuclear program” could be the adoption of the model and parameters of the original 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran – to limit the amount of enriched uranium at a low civil level to just a few hundred kilograms, to limit the number of centrifuges in the uranium enrichment facility, and to forbid the separation of plutonium from used nuclear fuel rods. And as an all-encompassing framework that would connect all the limitations, adoption of the IAEA monitoring model that operated under the Iran nuclear agreement which was the most deep and intrusive in nuclear history. This is a model that could block the development of nuclear weapons. The only problem is that Netanyahu opposed with all his strength the JCPOA with Iran, and worked with Trump to bring about the dismantlement of the nuclear agreement. This was a strategic mistake of the highest order.
Shemuel Meir is an independent Israeli strategic analyst