Saudi Arabia has been in and out of the news cycle with the exception of discussion about Mecca and the spread of COVID-19. But while the world is worried about the spread of disease, financial instability, and the growing problems of nationalism in Europe, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Saudis have turned to their would-be friends, the Chinese, for help with building nuclear plants and nuclear weapons.
Saudi Arabia has constructed with Chinese help a facility for extracting uranium yellowcake from uranium ore, an advance in the oil-rich kingdom’s drive to master nuclear technology, according to Western officials with knowledge of the site.
The facility, which hasn’t been publicly disclosed, is in a sparsely populated area in Saudi Arabia’s northwest and has raised concern among U.S. and allied officials that the kingdom’s nascent nuclear program is moving ahead and that Riyadh is keeping open the option of developing nuclear weapons.
Even though Riyadh is still far from that point, the facility’s exposure appears certain to draw concern in the U.S. Congress, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers has expressed alarm about Saudi nuclear energy plans and about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s 2018 vow that “if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”
It is also likely to cause consternation in Israel, where officials have warily monitored Saudi Arabia’s nuclear work. (source)
On a side note, when I hear about “yellowcake uranium”, it reminds me of Colin Powell’s famous “yellowcake uranium” speech accusing Iraq of making nuclear weapons, which was a fraud but used in part to justify the American invasion of Iraq and the destruction of that nation in fourteen years to such an extreme that even fourteen centuries of continual Islamic invasions could not achieve.
Some people might say they are scared- what would happen if Saudi Arabia did acquire nuclear weapons? Who would they use it on?
Some say Israel, and some say “the US”- and of course, many of these are the same ones who believe that North Korea may have a chance at winning a war against the US with her questionable and poorly-functioning missiles that can barely fly over Japan). Some say they might use it against Iran because, for the more historically aware, Iran is a historical enemy of Saudi Arabia. However, the real reason for this is most likely because of Turkey.
Shoebat.com has discussed Turkey many times, and how Saudi Arabia is terrified of her for many reasons. To review (full discussions can be found in the Shoebat archives), Turkey is to the Middle East what Germany is to Europe and Japan is to Asia. She is the major power with a long history of imperialism, conquest, and the use of horrible violence against her neighbors. Turks have also served as guardians to the Muslim Caliphs, and since the fifteenth century with the Conquest of Constantinople (what the Turks call the “Fatih”) or the sixteenth century and the fall of the Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt (depending on which event one regards as the decisive historical marker), Turkey was the seat of the Sunni Muslim “Caliphate” as embodied by the Turkish Sultan. This persisted until the death of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924, ending at the time thirteen centuries of the chair passed from Mohammed to his followers in Islamic history, which was then followed by the establishment of the secular Turkish republic.
Shoebat.com has followed carefully how President Erdogan of Turkey fancies himself as another Sultan aspirant and like Putin with the Tsars, Erdogan is modeling his own rule after the Ottoman Empire in a seeming attempt to revive the Turkish Ottoman past. he has made considerable advances is this, as Turkish troops are already occupying Syrian territory and the Turkish military is becoming more independent, this apart from the fact that Turkey has the eighth strongest military in the world and the second largest military by size in all of Europe. We have also noted that Turkey has a special hatred of Saudi Arabia because she views the House of Saud as blasphemous infidels who usurped what is “legal” Turkish control as guardians over the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina and is using them for their own personal gain without any care for the religious significance save to justify their own rule.
In 2017, Walid noted that Saudi Arabia is toast because the country can talk a lot, but she has no real way of protecting herself because her army is ineffective, and save for the US and Israel, she has no allies, and the Turks are moving thousands of troops close to the Saudi border. As I noted in February 2018, Saudi Arabia (as well as her other ally Pakistan) are cooked geese waiting to be feasted upon by Turkey with the support of her neighbors.
Turkey hates Saudi Arabia and believes that by divine right she is the protector of Islam, and sees the Saudi corruption as a symptom of the past century’s decline in Islamic influence and so as part of her goal of empire wants to re-take control as custodian of Mecca and Medina. Iran, due to the fact that she is Shia, has holy sites in different locations and owing to the Sunni-Shiite hatred so has no problem with Turkey’s desires towards Saudi.
Saudi Arabia can make all of the circuses she wants and try to remake herself as many ways as she pleases. The reality is that Saudi Arabia knows that she most likely does not have a future except as a vassal to her historical Turkish overlord. (source)
This is why, as I pointed out in February 2019, Saudi Arabia continues to grovel at the feet of Chinese atheists, even while ignoring the persecution of fellow Muslim Uighurs. It is because the House of Saud knows that her time is limited, and that the day is soon coming- not immediately, but in the historical sense -of a major conflict between her and Turkey, and that she is completely unprepared, and that were it not for the continued American influence, Saudi Arabia would already be overrun and the entire Saud family put to horrendous deaths at the hands of neo-Ottoman soldiers.
It’s not an accident- or just an act of anti-Christianity -that Erdogan converted the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, because he wants to signal that he is the leader of the Islamic world, which few Muslim nations are disputing. Likewise, there is also a reason that Saudi Arabia is encouraging people to avoid doing business with Turkey, because she is trying to hold on to her place that Turkey is taking back. Indeed, Turkey is still angry about the murders of Jamal Khashoggi,
Saudi Arabia is building this nuclear plant because she knows what is happening. It has already been noted back in 2019 that Turkey and Saudi Arabia may attempt proxy wars with each other, but this is just a start. Saudi Arabia is desperately trying to create a nuclear deterrent most likely against Turkey, who is already a nuclear power and continues to become stronger, and most assuredly, sits back comfortably as she continues to gingerly sharpen her khazouk that she plans to firmly insert into the Turkish backside and leave hanging in the desert for the sun to torment and the vultures to feast on as she marches to relive the Islamic historical dream in the footsteps of Mohammed by marching as a victor of war into the cities of Mecca and Medina and re-take what they believe is their rightful place as the guardians of Islam and the custodians of the Islamic sacred sites.