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Iranian Efforts Could Prompt Other Middle Eastern Countries to Re-Examine Nuclear Policies, Experts Warn By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — Iran’s development of a declared nuclear weapons capability could lead non-nuclear countries in the Middle East to re-examine their atomic weapons policies, according to a book released last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (see related GSN story, today). The Nuclear Tipping Point examines the nuclear histories and policies of four Middle Eastern countries — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey. None of the four countries is likely to renounce past decisions to abstain from seeking nuclear weapons, according to the book. However, that could change in the face of long-standing tensions between the Arab and Sunni Muslim states of the Middle East and non-Arab Shiite Muslim Iran and the increased military and diplomatic strength such weapons would give Tehran. “A rogue state’s successful acquisition of a nuclear weapon could trigger a range of potentially destabilizing regional responses, including the further proliferation of nuclear weapons beyond the rogue,” the book’s authors wrote. The risk of non-nuclear countries reconsidering their policies has not been a “conscious focus” of U.S. policy, said CSIS Senior Adviser Robert Einhorn, one of the book’s authors. “We need to start thinking about these issues right now,” he told Global Security Newswire Wednesday. Iran argues that its nuclear program is solely peaceful, but Western leaders fear it is developing a nuclear weapons program. There has been growing suspicion that Syria may be seeking to obtain nuclear weapons-related technologies, including reported speculation that Damascus might have been a client of top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has acknowledged providing nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier this month, though, that there are no signs that Syria is conducting nuclear weapons-related activities (see GSN, July 21). Even so, “Syria is on people’s watch list at a minimum,” Einhorn said. Iran’s development of a nuclear weapons capability would present Syria with a “confusing and conflicting situation,” wrote Henry L. Stimson Center President Ellen Laipson in the book. While Iran and Syria have been engaged in an informal strategic partnership since the 1980s against Israel, Damascus still maintains a strong attachment to an ideal of pan-Arab unity and non-Arab Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would serve as a “blow to the Arab psyche,” she wrote. Were Iran to obtain and then lose a nuclear weapon capability, either through a deliberate choice to surrender the arms or through a military strike, it may serve to push Syria farther into the non-nuclear camp, according to Laipson. “It would make it harder to sustain the argument for expending scarce resources on nuclear weapons and could tip the balance in favor of a more prudent, slow, hedging strategy or total avoidance of considering any nuclear weapons,” she wrote.
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