This is The Prophecy. The Prophecy is much more than seeing into the future. For The Prophecy sees without the limits of time. For The Prophecy sees what is, what was, and what always shall be.
Alexander Gates, a geology professor at Rutgers-Newark, is co-author of “The Encyclopedia of Earthquakes and Volcanoes,“ which will be published by Facts on File in July. He has been leading a four-year effort to remap an area known as the Sloatsburg Quadrangle, a 5-by-7-mile tract near Mahwah that crosses into New York State. The Ramapo Fault, which runs through it, was responsible for a big earthquake in 1884, and Dr. Gates warns that a recurrence is overdue. He recently talked about his findings.
Q. What have you found?
A. We’re basically looking at a lot more rock, and we’re looking at the fracturing and jointing in the bedrock and putting it on the maps. Any break in the rock is a fracture. If it has movement, then it’s a fault. There are a lot of faults that are offshoots of the Ramapo. Basically when there are faults, it means you had an earthquake that made it. So there was a lot of earthquake activity to produce these features. We are basically not in a period of earthquake activity along the Ramapo Fault now, but we can see that about six or seven times in history, about 250 million years ago, it had major earthquake activity. And because it’s such a fundamental zone of weakness, anytime anything happens, the Ramapo Fault goes.
A. I found a lot of faults, splays that offshoot from the Ramapo that go 5 to 10 miles away from the fault. I have looked at the Ramapo Fault in other places too. I have seen splays 5 to 10 miles up into the Hudson Highlands. And you can see them right along the roadsides on 287. There’s been a lot of damage to those rocks, and obviously it was produced by fault activities. All of these faults have earthquake potential.
Q. Describe the 1884 earthquake.
A. It was in the northern part of the state near the Sloatsburg area. They didn’t have precise ways of describing the location then. There was lots of damage. Chimneys toppled over. But in 1884, it was a farming community, and there were not many people to be injured. Nobody appears to have written an account of the numbers who were injured.
Q. What lessons we can learn from previous earthquakes?
A. In 1960, the city of Agadir in Morocco had a 6.2 earthquake that killed 12,000 people, a third of the population, and injured a third more. I think it was because the city was unprepared.There had been an earthquake in the area 200 years before. But people discounted the possibility of a recurrence. Here in New Jersey, we should not make the same mistake. We should not forget that we had a 5.4 earthquake 117 years ago. The recurrence interval for an earthquake of that magnitude is every 50 years, and we are overdue. The Agadir was a 6.2, and a 5.4 to a 6.2 isn’t that big a jump.
Q. What are the dangers of a quake that size?
A. When you’re in a flat area in a wooden house it’s obviously not as dangerous, although it could cut off a gas line that could explode. There’s a real problem with infrastructure that is crumbling, like the bridges with crumbling cement.
There’s a real danger we could wind up with our water supplies and electricity cut off if a sizable earthquake goes off. The best thing is to have regular upkeep and keep up new building codes. The new buildings will be O.K. But there is a sense of complacency.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin attend the Supreme State Council of the Union State Russia-Belarus meeting in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, April 6, 2023. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
President Vladimir Putin’s announced plan to put nuclear arms in Belarus may pose risks to NATO’s nuclear posture. A similar risk emerged in the 1980s when Moscow fielded a new missile aimed at Europe and Japan. Then, NATO responded by deploying its own missiles. It might consider this option again.
In February 2022, Belarus decided to allow nuclear arms on its territory, and last month Putin said Russia would, if necessary, introduce them. Some short-range Iskander ballistic missiles were said to be in Belarus, and a nuclear weapon storage facility would be ready by July 1. Russia’s ambassador in Minsk said the arms would be placed “close to the Western border,” near Poland.
Putin also said 10 Belarusian combat aircraft had been configured to carry nuclear weapons. But a wary Kremlin might worry that NATO has dense air defenses and that a disloyal Belarusian pilot could bomb Russia. Moscow would not likely share control with Minsk over any nuclear arms in Belarus.
In an evident slight to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, Putin announced his plan only days after the two declared that “nuclear powers must not deploy nuclear weapons beyond their national territories.”
Poland is alert to the threat. Last October, President Andrzej Duda said it was discussing “nuclear sharing” with the U.S. If Russia does station nuclear arms in Belarus, Warsaw may request NATO consultations.
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There is precedent. Four decades ago as the USSR secretly deployed hundreds of SS-20 intermediate-range missiles against Europe and Japan, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt appealed to NATO. It responded by deploying 572 U.S. intermediate-range missiles in Europe – 108 Pershing II ballistic missiles in West Germany and 464 GLCMs in five European member states, including West Germany.
Then West Germany was the most exposed frontline state, today it may be Poland. Fortunately, Moscow is no longer driven by aggressive Soviet ideology. Nonetheless, Putin’s frequent nuclear saber-rattling is irresponsible and potentially dangerous.
NATO might prudently weigh whether it has the right set of nuclear forces. The U.S. is said to have some 100 B-61 tactical nuclear-armed bombs in Europe. As in the 1980s, however, NATO might decide that missiles can better penetrate enemy defenses than aircraft which deliver gravity bombs.
NATO may need to consider how to counter any move to Belarus of nuclear-armed Iskander or intermediate-range 9M729 missiles. Nuclear options might include:
Take no action: NATO might decide that current U.S. nuclear forces (1,420 warheads on 659 strategic missiles and bombers plus the B-61 bombs in Europe), plus British and French nuclear forces, are sufficient to deter Russian aggression.
Land-based missiles: NATO might follow its 1980s template and deploy new land-based missiles. For example, the U.S. could add a nuclear mission to a planned Army intermediate-range missile.
The latter two options might fill a perceived gap in the U.S. deterrent spectrum between conventional and long-range nuclear forces. This could be more salient because Russia, in the view of U.S. Intelligence, is increasing its reliance on nuclear, cyber and space capabilities.
Some frontline allies, such as Poland, may prefer land-based systems partly because they are more visible than offshore weapons and may have a stronger deterrent effect. For survivability, land-based missiles might rely partly on mobility.
It was not always like this. In the 1990s, Belarus eagerly accepted the removal from its territory of all former Soviet nuclear weapons and the destruction of all delivery vehicles — work completed under President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
A return to Belarus of Kremlin-controlled nuclear arms may force NATO to rethink a nuclear strategy and posture which for long seemed settled.
WilliamCourtneyis an adjunct senior fellow at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. He was deputy negotiator in U.S.-Soviet defense and space talks, and ambassador to the U.S.-Soviet commission which implemented the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and, after the Soviet collapse, to Kazakhstan and Georgia
SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Five Indian army soldiers were killed on Thursday when rebels fighting against Indian rule ambushed a military vehicle in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, the military said.
Militants attacked the army vehicle with gunfire in the southern Rajouri sector near the highly militarized Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, a military statement said. It said five soldiers died in the attack and another was seriously injured.
The statement said the “unidentified terrorists” took “advantage of heavy rains and low visibility in the area.”
“The vehicle caught fire due to likely use of grenades by terrorists,” it added.
Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan each administer part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.
Rebel groups have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir’s independence or merger with neighboring Pakistan.
Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
New Delhi insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle.
Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
China will have a stockpile of 1,500 nuclear warheads “by 2035,” according to Western officials who worry that technological advances and geopolitical acrimony have raised the potential for nuclear conflict.
“We are now entering a time when transformative technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing may add uncertainty to the balance of power and make the question of when to use WMD more complicated, not less,” Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said Tuesday. “Those leaps forward bring a new degree of fear and uncertainty, along with promise.”
Those technological advances could complicate strategic decision-making under any circumstances, but Russia ’s campaign to overthrow the Ukrainian government has raised the specter of nuclear weapons on the battlefield. And that war could figure as a portent of threats to come, Western officials suspect, if rogue states and vulnerable nations sense a growing incentive to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.
“We stand at the crossroads — in one direction lies the collapse of the international arms control order and the unrestricted proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, with profoundly dangerous consequences,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a virtual appearance alongside Sherman. “But there is an alternative way ahead, one where we do the work, however difficult, where we build trust, develop new behaviors, and increase our security.”
The difficulty has been heightened by the array of countries modernizing or pursuing nuclear weapons, with China — “which is estimated to have 1,500 warheads by 2035,” according to Stoltenberg — chief among them.
“We don’t regard or assess China as an adversary. But China poses some challenges to our interests, to our NATO values, and to our security,” Stoltenberg said. “And that makes it even more important to engage with China because we see that they’re investing heavily in new modern capabilities, long-range missiles, more than tripling the number of nuclear warheads within a few years. … And the message is that it will be also in the interest of China to have verifiable limits on their nuclear arsenals.”
That message was delivered in parallel earlier this week at an assembly of foreign ministers from the G-7, as the group of the seven-largest industrialized democracies is known.
“The G-7 urges China to engage promptly in strategic risk reduction discussions with the U.S. and to promote stability through greater transparency of China’s nuclear weapon policies, plans, and capabilities,” the G-7 foreign ministers declared in an April 18 joint communique after the meeting in Japan. “Our security policies are based on the understanding that nuclear weapons, for as long as they exist, should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war and coercion.”
China fumed at the communique, which also urged Beijing “to abstain from threats, coercion, intimidation, or the use of force” against Taiwan or in its other territorial disputes around the region. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Wenbin denounced the G-7’s putative “arrogance, prejudice and deliberate desire to block and contain China” and complained that Japan is protected by U.S. nuclear guarantees.
“Japan has long characterized itself as a victim of nuclear explosions and an advocate of a nuclear-weapons-free world,” Wang said at a Monday press briefing. “But in fact, Japan sits comfortably under the U.S.’s nuclear umbrella, and it is against and hindering the U.S.’s renouncing of the first use of nuclear weapons. Some Japanese politicians even suggest the possibility of nuclear sharing with the U.S.”
Japanese officials fear that China, in light of the example set by Russian President Vladimir Putin, will feel free to attack their neighbors in the confidence that their own nuclear arsenals will deter the United States from intervening to protect an ally or a partner. Similar anxiety intensifies with each North Korean missile test, as well as the “fearsome jump in Iran’s uranium enrichment levels,” as Sherman put it.
“In each case, transparency is almost nonexistent, which only serves to raise the risk of an escalation,” she said.
“I think in this uncertain environment, a lot of countries are saying, ‘Well, maybe we should join this club because otherwise, we have no deterrence,’” Sherman said. “And NATO is a defensive organization. It is all about deterrence. And so how do we extend that deterrence to the rest of the world?”
Speaking at a ceremony, the Iranian president sad ‘the Zionist regime has received the message that any tiny action against (our) country will prompt a harsh answer…[and] will accompany the destruction of Haifa and Tel Aviv’Share in FacebookShare in Twitter
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, left, listens to the army’s air force commander Gen. Hamid Vahedi as he reviews an army parade commemorating Army Day in Tehran on Tuesday.Credit: Vahid Salemi /APThe Associated Press
Apr 18, 2023
Iran’s President on Tuesday reiterated threats against Israel while marking the country’s annual Army Day, though he stayed away from criticizing Saudi Arabia as Tehran seeks a détente with the kingdom.
The comments by Ebrahim Raisi came as fighter jets and helicopters flew overhead in Tehran, and as Iranian submarines sailed across its waters during a ceremony carried live by state television.
The day celebrates Iran’s regular military, not its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, whose expeditionary forces operate across the wider Mideast and aid Iranian-allied militia groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The Guard also routinely has tense encounters with the U.S. Navy.
Speaking at the ceremony, Raisi threatened Israel, which is suspected of carrying out a series of attacks targeting Iran since the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers.
“Enemies, particularly the Zionist regime, have received the message that any tiny action against (our) country will prompt a harsh answer from the armed forces, which will accompany the destruction of Haifa and Tel Aviv,” Raisi said.
Last Friday, Raisi gave a virtual address – a first-of-its-kind event – to hundreds of supporters of Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group on Jerusalem Day,” or al-Quds Day after the city’s Arabic name. Raisi’s speech was seen as part of efforts to mend a rift between Hamas and its long-time patron, Iran, over the devastating civil war in Syria.
Raisi also reiterated a demand for the U.S. to leave the Mideast. American policy since the Carter administration has viewed protected the Persian Gulf region as crucial to securing global energy supplies. A fifth of the world’s supply of oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.
While not specifically naming Saudi Arabia, Raisi did offer an olive branch in his remarks.
“The hand of our armed forces warmly shakes the hand of the regional nations that intend to create security in the region,” the president said.
In March, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies after seven years of tensions, a diplomatic agreement reached in China. In the time since, Saudi Arabia also has been involved in a prisoner swap with Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, with hopes such a deal could see an end to that country’s years-long proxy war.
When President Xi Jinping of China met President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow last month, Russia and China’s nuclear authorities signed an agreement to extend their cooperation for years.Credit…Grigory Sysoyev/Agence France-Presse, via Sputnik
China is on track to massively expand its nuclear arsenal, just as Russia suspends the last major arms control treaty. It augurs a new world in which Beijing, Moscow and Washington will likely be atomic peers.
President Xi Jinping of China seems intent on expanding the nation’s nuclear arsenal to rival that of Russia and the United States.Credit…Florence Lo/Reuters
David Sanger and William J. Broad have covered nuclear weapons for The Times for four decades. Chris Buckley reports on China’s military from Taiwan.
April 19, 2023Updated 12:34 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — On the Chinese coast, just 135 miles from Taiwan, Beijing is preparing to start a new reactor the Pentagon sees as delivering fuel for a vast expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, potentially making it an atomic peer of the United States and Russia. The reactor, known as a fast breeder, excels at making plutonium, a top fuel of atom bombs.
The nuclear material for the reactor is being supplied by Russia, whose Rosatom nuclear giant has in the past few months completed the delivery of 25 tons of highly enriched uranium to get production started. That deal means that Russia and China are now cooperating on a project that will aid their own nuclear modernizations and, by the Pentagon’s estimates, produce arsenals whose combined size could dwarf that of the United States.
This new reality is prompting a broad rethinking of American nuclear strategy that few anticipated a dozen years ago, when President Barack Obama envisioned a world that was inexorably moving toward eliminating all nuclear weapons. Instead, the United States is now facing questions about how to manage a three-way nuclear rivalry, which upends much of the deterrence strategy that has successfully avoided nuclear war.
China insists the breeder reactors on the coast will be purely for civilian purposes, and there is no evidence that China and Russia are working together on the weapons themselves, or a coordinated nuclear strategy to confront their common adversary.
But John F. Plumb, a senior Pentagon official, told Congress recently: “There’s no getting around the fact that breeder reactors are plutonium, and plutonium is for weapons.”
“By the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries,” the Pentagon said last fall in a policy document. “This will create new stresses on stability and new challenges for deterrence, assurance, arms control, and risk reduction.”
In recent weeks, American officials have sounded almost fatalistic about the possibility of limiting China’s buildup.
“We are probably not going to be able to do anything to stop, slow down, disrupt, interdict, or destroy the Chinese nuclear development program that they have projected out over the next 10 to 20 years,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress late last month.
Better Understand the Relations Between China and the U.S.
General Milley’s words are particularly stark given that the United States spent years trying to move the world beyond nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama put in place a strategy to reduce American reliance on nuclear arms in hopes that other powers would follow suit.
Now, the opposite is happening. Mr. Putin’s failures on the battlefield are making him, if anything, more dependent on his nuclear arsenal.
The one remaining treaty limiting the size of the American and Russian arsenals, New START, runs out in roughly 1,000 days, and American officials concede there is little chance of forging a new treaty while the Ukraine war rages. Even if Russia and the United States could sit down and hash one out, it would be of diminished worth unless China signed up too. Beijing has shown no interest.
Underscoring the urgency of the problem, the State Department convened an expert panel in recent weeks and gave it 180 days to come up with recommendations, saying “the United States is entering one of the most complex and challenging periods for the global nuclear order, potentially more so than during the Cold War.”
The dynamic is, indeed, more complicated now — the Cold War involved only two major players, the United States and the Soviet Union; China was an afterthought. Its force of 200 or so nuclear weapons was so small that it barely figured into the discussion, and Beijing never participated in the major arms control treaties.
Still, there are reasons to be cautious about worst-case analyses of nuclear capabilities. China and Russia have a long history of mutual distrust. And the Pentagon is no stranger to threat inflation, which can free up budgets. Recently, some experts have faulted its warnings.
“When you dig in, there are lots of questions,” said Jon B. Wolfsthal, a nuclear official on the National Security Council during the Obama administration. “Even if they double or triple, we’re watching this and have the ability to react.”
Nonetheless, some critics have begun to echo the new Pentagon assessments, at times offering larger estimates than the Biden administration.
On Capitol Hill, there is discussion of whether the coming expansion of China’s arsenal requires an entirely new approach. Some Republicans have begun talking about expanding the nuclear arsenal after New START expires, so that it could match a combined Russian-Chinese force, used in a coordinated way against the United States. Others call that an overreaction.
“I think it is insane to think that we will be fighting two nuclear wars at the same time,’’ said Matthew Bunn, a Harvard professor who tracks nuclear weapons.
China entered the nuclear club in 1964, but for years limited its arsenal to a few hundred weapons.Credit…Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone, via Getty Images
China entered the nuclear club in October 1964, with a nuclear test at Lop Nor that the Kennedy and Johnson administration briefly gave thought to sabotaging.
But Mao Zedong adopted a “minimum deterrent” strategy, dismissing the Cold War arms race as a phenomenal waste of money. Limiting the arsenal to a few hundred weapons remained China’s approach until Mr. Xi reversed course.
He now seems unlikely to consider slowing the growth of China’s nuclear arsenal until it is closer in size to the other two superpowers’. In a speech laying out his agenda for his next term in power, the Chinese leader told a Communist Party congress in October that his country must “establish a strong system of strategic deterrence.”
Deepening tensions between Beijing and Washington appear to have hardened Mr. Xi’s judgment that China must counter “all-around containment,” including with a more robust nuclear deterrent. Even experts who believe that China’s breeder reactors face many technological hurdles see other signs that the country is expanding its nuclear weapons potential, including reprocessing plants for spent nuclear fuel, new reactors that appear to have no role in the civilian power grid, and building activity at the Lop Nor nuclear test site.
“The Chinese leadership has become even more determined to focus on the long-term China-U. S. competition and, if necessary, confrontation,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. China’s nuclear expansion, he said, is “mostly to shape the American assessment of the international balance of power, and make it accept the reality that China is set to become a similarly powerful country.”
A sprawling missile silo field under construction in the Xinjiang region of China.Credit…Planet Labs PBC
In the past, China mostly kept its missiles stored separately from the nuclear warheads, meaning that Washington would have significant warning if Beijing ever considered escalating. That would build in time for diplomacy. The new solid-fuel missiles that will probably be installed in the silos are more likely to be coupled to their warheads — much like American designs — reducing the time it would take to launch them, said M. Taylor Fravel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who studies China’s military.
“China wants to remove any shadow of a doubt in the minds of the United States about its deterrent,” he said.
China is also enhancing its “triad” — the three ways of delivering nuclear weapons from land, sea and air — paralleling how the United States and Soviet Union made their atomic threats nearly invulnerable during the Cold War.
For example, the Chinese navy is working on a new generation of submarines for launching missiles, replacing the current ones, which are so noisy that American forces have little trouble tracking them.
In Washington, the fear is that Mr. Xi has learned a lesson from Mr. Putin’s nuclear threats — and might brandish his new weapons in a conflict over Taiwan.
Mr. Putin is looking to improve Russia’s weapon’s systems and nuclear arsenal and has suspended many obligations under the last arms treaty with the United States. Credit…Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press
In Russia and the U.S., rolling out new weapons
China’s expansion comes after Russia and the United States spent decades hammering out one agreement after another to cut the size of their nuclear arsenals, which at their peak held roughly 70,000 weapons. Now each side is down to 1,550 long-range weapons. Just weeks after President Biden’s inauguration, he and Mr. Putin extended the New START accord for five years.
But since the Ukraine invasion, the treaty is in tatters. Mr. Putin announced recently he was suspending the agreement. While he has stuck by the 1,550 limit, almost every other treaty obligation has been wiped out, including mutual inspections and the exchange of data about each other’s arsenals.
Mr. Putin is working hard to improve his arsenal. Five years ago he used video animations of Russian weapons targeting Florida to showcase five new classes of nuclear arms he claimed could defeat the West in war, including one he called “invincible.” At the time, Western analysts suggested that Mr. Putin, his economy weak, was mostly bluffing.
Only two of those weapons systems have moved forward while three others — including the “invincible” nuclear cruise missile — are mired in delays, testing failures and feasibility questions. Overall, some analysts maintain, the new arms are a distraction. What really matters is Russia’s upgrading of its Cold War arsenal into a far more survivable force than the aging systems inherited from the Soviet Union.
“That’s 95 percent of what’s happening,” said Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a private research group in Washington. “People talk about grand new systems that will change everything. But of course, they won’t.”
The Pentagon sees at least one of the emerging weapons as potentially threatening, in part because it could, if perfected, outwit the United States’ antimissile defenses. The weapon is a long-range nuclear-powered undersea torpedo that, once unleashed, could move autonomously toward one of the nation’s coasts. Its warhead, as described by Russia, would create “areas of wide radioactive contamination that would be unsuitable for military, economic, or other activity for long periods of time.” Mr. Kristensen said the torpedo was close to operational.
The Pentagon said in a policy document that the United States will face two major nuclear powers by the 2030s.Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times
For its part, the Biden administration has announced plans to make the first new warhead for the nation’s nuclear arsenal since the Cold War — an update that the White House says is long overdue for safety reasons. The weapon, for submarine missiles, is a small part of a gargantuan overhaul of the nation’s complex of atomic bases, plants, bombers, submarines and land-based missiles. Its 30-year cost could reach $2 trillion.
Beijing and Moscow point to the overhaul as a motivating factor for their own upgrades. Arms controllers see a spiral of moves and countermoves that threatens to raise the risk of miscalculation and war.
Like all top nuclear arms, the new warhead, known as the W93, is thermonuclear. That means a small atom bomb at its core acts as a match to ignite the weapon’s hydrogen fuel, which can produce blasts a thousand times as strong as the Hiroshima bomb. The atomic triggers are usually made of plutonium. Experts say that is true of Beijing’s arsenal and explains its building of breeder reactors.
The United States has about 40 tons of plutonium left over from the Cold War that is available for weapons and needs no more. It is, however, building two new plants that can fashion the old plutonium into triggers for refurbished and new thermonuclear arms, such as the W93. Recently, the agency that does investigations for Congress estimated the new plants could cost up to $24 billion.
Many arms controllers decry the new facilities. They say Washington has in storage at least 20,000 plutonium triggers from retired hydrogen bombs and that some of them, if needed, could be recycled.
Despite such criticism, the Biden administration is pushing ahead, insisting that trigger recycling is risky. Jennifer M. Granholm, the energy secretary, has declared the new plants essential for “a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent.”
Modernizing an aging nuclear force, as Ms. Granholm suggests, is one of the few areas of bipartisan accord. But it does not address the larger strategic challenge.
“We don’t know what to do,” said Henry D. Sokolski, a former Pentagon official who now leads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. “What’s the response to this — do we just build more, and are we going to be able to build many more than they are?”
David E. Sanger is a White House and national security correspondent. In a 38-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook
William J. Broad is a science journalist and senior writer. He joined The Times in 1983, and has shared two Pulitzer Prizes with his colleagues, as well as an Emmy Award and a DuPont Award. @WilliamJBroad
Chris Buckley is The Times’s chief correspondent in China, where he has lived for most of the past 30 years after growing up in Sydney, Australia. Before joining The Times in 2012, he was a correspondent in Beijing for Reuters. @ChuBailiang
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud attends the 43rd Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit at King Abdul Aziz International Conference Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on December 09, 2022. Royal Court of Saudi Arabia / Anadolu Agency via AFP.
Riyadh is developing the Saudi nuclear programme despite concerns about the regional proliferation of nuclear weapons and a possible nuclear arms race.
The controversy surrounding Saudi Arabia’s nuclear programme resurfaced when Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister, announced Riyadh’s intention to use its domestically-sourced uranium to build up its nuclear power industry. He noted that recent explorations had revealed a diverse portfolio of uranium in the Kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter.
He added, “The Saudi national atomic energy project has two major components. The first is building nuclear power reactors, which include two large commercial nuclear power reactors. The second is trying to exploit our uranium resources.”
Uranium enrichment is a highly sensitive matter, as enriched uranium can be used in the production of nuclear weapons. For nuclear reactors to operate efficiently, the uranium fuel must be enriched to 5 per cent; however, the same technology could also be employed to enrich uranium to higher percentages for military purposes.
It is widely believed that Saudi Arabia, with its ample financial and human resources, can establish the robust infrastructure for a nuclear programme were it to deem such an initiative necessary.
In pursuit of long-term economic growth, the Saudi government aims to find an alternative source of fuel. The government hopes to increase its electricity production capacity from 45 gigawatts in 2023 to 120 gigawatts by 2035, thereby reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.
To address this need, Saudi Arabia has entered into a series of bilateral agreements with several countries specialising in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.
After completing technical specification documents to launch a tender process for its nuclear power plant, Saudi Arabia is now considering a licence request for the nuclear plant’s site.
The Low Power Research Reactor project “contributes to the design and development of the nuclear reactor industry in the Kingdom, . . . building human capacity to operate nuclear power reactors and transfer their technologies.” It is part of the Vision 2030 objectives to diversify the Kingdom’s economy and increase its renewable energy production.
The King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy is currently carrying out the third and final phase of identifying and configuring the nuclear plant site with two reactors. Saudi Arabia has accepted light Pressurised Water Reactors as the preferred option.
Riyadh claims it is committed to developing a national energy mix in accordance with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 by introducing a civil atomic energy programme to be one of the pillars of the Kingdom’s strategic plan for national transformation towards sustainable development.
Saudi Arabia plans to produce 17 gigawatts of nuclear energy by 2032. In 2011, the country announced its intention to construct 16 nuclear reactors over the next 20 years costing over $80 billion.
Photo taken for Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki al-Faisal on July 9, 2016, in Le Bourget, near Paris. ALAIN JOCARD / AFP
Satellite imagery from 2020 reveals that Saudi Arabia is pushing to complete its first nuclear reactor.
However, the country’s efforts to establish its nuclear power programme are not new. In the past, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a prominent member of the ruling family, former head of the General Intelligence Directorate and former ambassador to the US, has emphasised Saudi Arabia’s right to enrich uranium for energy and self-defence purposes, including the development of nuclear weapons to counter Iran’s nuclear programme.
In an interview with MSNBC, al-Faisal stated, “We should do whatever is necessary, including acquiring the knowledge to develop a bomb in order to defend against a potentially nuclear-armed Iran.”
Concerns Over Iranian Nuclear Threat
Saudi Arabia’s ambitions, including those of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, go beyond mere publicity stunts. The Saudi concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme are evident.
The Kingdom may be compelled to protect itself from the Iranian nuclear threat by acquiring a nuclear deterrent or forming alliances that restore the balance of power.
It remains unclear where the Kingdom’s ambitions will end. In 2018, the Saudi crown prince announced that his country would develop nuclear weapons if its regional rival did so. In an interview with CBS News, he stated, “If Iran develops a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.” The statements triggered questions concerning a possible nuclear arms race with Iran.
Saudi Arabia has been exploring potential partnerships with Pakistan and China, among others, to aid its nuclear programme. There are concerns, however, regarding the Kingdom’s ability to successfully implement its brand-new project, its strained relationship with the current US administration and Israel’s stance on the matter.
General Asim Munir, the chief of staff of Pakistan’s military, visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates six weeks into his tenure, raising concerns that the Kingdom may be pursuing its nuclear weapons ambitions.
Simon Henderson, a researcher at the Washington Institute, suggested that the visit might have had ulterior motives, such as the exchange of nuclear and missile technology.
Henderson noted that the brief released by the Saudi Press Agency after the meeting did not mention “the widely held assumption that Pakistan’s “Islamic bomb” project – historically funded by Saudi Arabia – came with a promise that the resulting nuclear weapons and delivery systems would be provided to the Kingdom if it ever needed them.”
There are also indications that Pakistan may have already provided Saudi Arabia with enrichment technology via the proliferation network of the late Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was placed under house arrest in 2004.
Saudi Arabia’s nuclear ambitions have raised concerns within the international community for several years. A US embassy telegram leaked by WikiLeaks in 2009 warned that Saudi Arabia’s push towards a nuclear energy programme without US participation would threaten its interests in the short term.
A United States Senate report released in 2008 warned, “If Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, it will place tremendous pressure on Saudi Arabia to follow suit.”
Moreover, Saudi Arabia will likely develop its nuclear capabilities if the US were to sign a nuclear agreement with Iran.
In a recent survey conducted by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security among 167 experts, 68 per cent of respondents believed Iran would likely become a nuclear-armed state by 2033, while 41 per cent expected Saudi Arabia to develop nuclear weapons during the same period.
Recently, Saudi Arabia has publicly announced its support of all international efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and “threatening” the region and the world.
Saudi’s permanent representative to the United Nations said that “Iran’s failure to fully comply with its obligations under the comprehensive safeguards agreements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a threat to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”
On the other hand, Iran accuses Saudi Arabia of hindering the monitoring of its own nuclear programme. The IAEA does not have the authority to verify Saudi’s programme or conduct inspections, raising Iranian concerns regarding the existence of a secret Saudi nuclear weapons programme.
Looking for Partners
By the end of 2020, Saudi Arabia, with the help of China, began constructing a uranium extraction facility in the northwestern city of al-Ula.
Russian company Rosatom announced its intention to participate in the tender for the construction of Saudi Arabia’s first nuclear power plant and offered itself as a potential contractor for the site’s development.
In a letter to former President Donald Trump, US Senators warned of the dangers of secret nuclear and missile programmes carried out by Saudi Arabia with the aid of China.
President Xi Jinping’s recent talks in Saudi Arabia have also given rise to speculation concerning the Kingdom’s endeavour to build nuclear reactors.
Some suggest that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is negotiating with China and South Korea to determine which country can offer the best deal in terms of energy, cost and reliability.
According to an intelligence report, the Crown Prince aims to develop Saudi Arabia’s own civil nuclear industry to facilitate the transport of Saudi energy across the Kingdom and compete with other countries producing nuclear power.
It is, therefore, logical to assume that the US administration, within current laws and international agreements, will take all necessary measures to prevent Russia and China from securing a nuclear deal with Saudi.
Saudi Arabia is a vast landmass, larger than Western Europe. Its strategic location gives rise to a multitude of threats, with nearly one-third of the world’s energy sources located within its borders, over 20 per cent of global commercial passages and 4 per cent of the world’s GDP.
From a pragmatic standpoint, it is plausible for Prince Mohammed bin Salman to seek nuclear energy and weapons.
Despite signing international and bilateral agreements to develop peaceful nuclear energy, the ambiguity of statements and the absence of a legal framework for the Kingdom’s nuclear programme raise questions about its safety and security.
Since Prince Mohammed bin Salman took the reins, the Saudi regime has become less conservative and increasingly willing to take covert, controversial measures – as it has done in the past – to protect its interests.
However, to build trust, Saudi Arabia must address allegations and refute concerns from the international community and the United States regarding its potential lack of rationality if it were to acquire nuclear weapons.
The Prophecy Blog 