Saudi warns of regional arms race if Iran obtains nuclear weapon

In Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister delivered a stark warning about the future of the Middle East. If Iran were to develop a working nuclear weapon, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said plainly, the region's calculations would shift entirely. The Gulf Arab states—Sunni-led nations that have watched Iran's military capabilities expand for years—would have no choice but to pursue their own security measures, he suggested, speaking at the World Policy Conference on a Sunday in December 2022.

The backdrop to this warning is a stalled diplomatic process. Indirect talks between the United States and Iran, aimed at reviving the 2015 nuclear agreement that Washington abandoned in 2018, had ground to a halt in September. The negotiations had been fragile for months. Western powers accused Iran of making unreasonable demands. Meanwhile, the world's attention had fractured—pulled toward Russia's invasion of Ukraine and toward the streets of Iran itself, where protests had erupted following the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody.

Into this vacuum of stalled diplomacy came fresh concern from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran had announced it was expanding its uranium enrichment capacity—a technical step that raised alarms among nuclear experts and diplomats alike. The UN's nuclear chief had publicly voiced worry about what this meant.

Prince Faisal's language was careful but unmistakable. "If Iran gets an operational nuclear weapon, all bets are off," he said. The phrase carried weight: it meant that the current rules of engagement, the current calculations about deterrence and diplomacy, would no longer apply. "We are in a very dangerous space in the region," he continued. "You can expect that regional states will certainly look towards how they can ensure their own security." The implication was clear—if Iran crossed that threshold, Saudi Arabia and its neighbors would pursue their own paths to security, potentially including nuclear weapons of their own.

Yet Saudi Arabia's position on the nuclear deal itself remained contradictory. Riyadh remained skeptical of the 2015 agreement, Prince Faisal acknowledged. But the kingdom supported efforts to bring it back to life—with a crucial condition. Any revived deal, he said, should be "a starting point, not an end point" for negotiations with Tehran. What Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states wanted was something more comprehensive: an agreement that did not merely constrain Iran's nuclear program but also addressed what they saw as Iran's broader military threat. They wanted the deal to cover Iran's missiles, its drones, and its network of armed groups across the region—the proxy forces that had become instruments of Iranian influence from Iraq to Yemen to Lebanon.

When asked directly about Iran's denials that it sought nuclear weapons, Prince Faisal expressed skepticism. "We hear from the Iranians that they have no interest in a nuclear weapons programme, it would be very comforting to be able to believe that," he said. "We need more assurance on that level." Iran maintained that its nuclear technology was purely for civilian use, but the gap between Tehran's assurances and what Gulf Arab states were willing to accept had only widened.

A senior official from the United Arab Emirates added another layer to the pressure. On the day before Prince Faisal's remarks, this official suggested that the current moment—with Western nations accusing Russia of using Iranian drones in Ukraine, and with Iran's nuclear program under intense scrutiny—offered an opportunity to rethink the entire framework of the nuclear deal. Iran and Russia both denied the drone allegations, but the accusation itself had shifted the political terrain. What had been a bilateral negotiation between the US and Iran was now entangled with questions about Iran's military support for Russia, about regional proxy networks, about the full scope of Tehran's capabilities.

The signs, Prince Faisal concluded, were not encouraging. The diplomatic path that had seemed possible just months earlier now appeared increasingly distant. And in that distance, the possibility of a different kind of competition was taking shape—one in which Gulf Arab states might feel compelled to pursue their own military answers to the Iranian question.