Israeli energy minister does not want Saudi Arabia to have a nuclear program

Israel’s energy minister today voiced opposition to allowing Saudi Arabia to develop a civilian nuclear program as part of a possible US-mediated deal to normalize relations. Reuters reports. The New York Times (NYT) reported in March that such a program would be one of Riyadh’s conditions for establishing ties with Israel. Neither Saudi Arabia nor the United States has confirmed the report.

“Israel naturally does not support such things. I don’t think Israel should agree to it,” Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz replied when Ynet TV asked whether he would support a potential Saudi nuclear program as part of a deal to establish relations between the two countries.

According to a statement by its foreign minister in January, Saudi Arabia does not intend to normalize relations with Israel until the Palestinians have their own state.

Israel has long feared, citing Iraq and Libya, that potentially hostile states in the region could use civilian nuclear power and other projects developed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), in force since 1970, as a cover for secretly producing nuclear bombs, Reuters writes. Iraq’s nuclear program, which began in the 1970s, was seriously set back by an Israeli air strike in 1981, the Gulf War in 1991, and years of sanctions. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the allied invasion in spring 2003. In 2003, Libya admitted that it had been developing weapons of mass destruction and promised to abandon its weapons program.