Saudi Disad
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Saudi Prolif Good - IranSaudi prolif deters Iran nuclearization Lalwani 2008 (Sameer, “Another Take on Saudi Arabia's Nuclear Agenda,” June 10/ http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/06/another_respons) Finally, though its true that nuclear assistance might be playing with fire, there seems to be a very legitimate strategic calculus to assisting the Saudi government -- namely, signaling to Iran the cost of going nuclear. Right now Iran has conventional weapons superiority in the region but a drive to nuclear weapons that results in proliferation would eliminate their advantage through nuclear-provided strategic parity. If Iran actually believes that other states in the gulf region are ready and capable of also going nuclear, it might rethink its strategic calculations and turn back from weaponization. Certainly one must be wary of this spiraling into an arms race, but there is also a conceivable strategic logic to the moves being played by the US and Saudi Arabia. Saudi and the GCC have already indicated interest in this nuclear project but also in dissuading Iran from its nuclear ambitions and ultimately developing a regional security architecture for the Gulf states as Thomas Lippman has argued. If some sort of Saudi/GCC peaceful nuclear venture is inevitable, its better the US be involved in guiding it -- commanding greater influence and knowledge of capabilities -- rather than China or Russia stepping in to assume the role of nuclear patron. Iranian proliferation leads to Israeli launch and nuclear war Schoenfeld 1998 (Gabriel, the senior editor of Commentary, Commentary, LEXIS) Now, once again, the question has arisen of what forcible steps Israel might take in order to deny nuclear weapons to its enemies. This past September, Ephraim Sneh, a general in the Israeli army reserves and a leading member of the opposition Labor party, spoke publicly of the possibility that the IDF might be compelled to "deliver a conventional counterstrike or preemptive strike" against Iranian atomic facilities. This was not long after Teheran tested its Shahab-3 missile--to the yawns of the international community--and then displayed the missile in a military parade with banners draped from it reading, "Israel should be wiped from the map"--to still more yawns by the international community. Sneh was roundly criticized at home for his remarks, not because he was wrong but because, as Uzi Landau, the chairman of the Knesset's foreign-affairs and security committee, explained, "unnecessary chatter" could heighten the likelihood of Israel's being targeted for attack. But whether or not Sneh should have spoken out, the option he referred to may be less viable than it once was. Both Iran and Iraq have already taken measures--concealment, dispersion, hardening, surface-to-air defense--to ensure that the feat performed by Israel's air force in 1981, and for which it was universally condemned at the time, including by the United States, could not easily be repeated. If preemption is largely ruled out as an option, what then? To reduce its vulnerability--enemy missiles can arrive within ten minutes from firing--Israel may well be compelled to adopt a "launch-on-warning" posture for both its conventional and nuclear forces. For the purpose of considering this eventuality, we may assume that Israel has indeed developed a secure retaliatory force of the kind Tucker saw as essential to stability. Even so, however, this would not offer much reassurance. Unlike its neighbors, and unlike the U.S., Israel is a tiny country, and in a nuclear environment it would not have the luxury of waiting to assess the damage from a first strike before deciding how to respond. Thus, in any future crisis, at the first hint from satellite intelligence or some other means that a missile fusillade was being prepared from, say, Iran or Iraq, Israel, to protect its populace, would have to punch first. And it would have to strike not only at missile sites, some of which it might well miss, but at a broader range of targets--communications facilities, air bases, storage bunkers, and all other critical nodes--so as to paralyze the enemy and thus rule out the possibility of attack. These are the implications of launch-on-warning. Clearly, such a posture presents grave problems. Lacking secure second-strike forces of their own, and aware that Israel would no doubt try to hit them preemptively, Iran and Iraq would be under tremendous pressure to launch their missiles first--to "use them or lose them." In other words, what this scenario leads to is the prospect of both sides' moving to a permanent position of hair-trigger alert. It is a nightmarish prospect. The possibility that nuclear war might break out at any moment--by accident, miscalculation, or design--would inevitably place an intolerable strain on Israel's freedom of military movement, and take a no less heavy toll on civilian morale. Saudi Prolif Good - StabilitySaudi prolif is inevitable and secures Middle East instability by deterrence Blank 2003 (Stephen, analyst of international security affairs, “Saudi Arabia's nuclear gambit,” Asia Times) Another consideration is that a possible Saudi nuclear deterrent might also check Iran, with whom Pakistan has issues, especially over Afghanistan. Thus, a possible Riyadh-Islamabad axis would offer those two capitals, both of which continue to sponsor terrorism in Palestine and Kashmir respectively, a way to check India and its allies or partners, Iran and Israel. Although both governments have firmly denied these allegations of nuclear cooperation, the explosion of reports from different sources in the US and Europe, many allegedly based on sources with access to these governments, appears to have some basis in reality. Middle East instability ensures nuclear war Steinbach 2002 (John Steinbach in March 2002 (Source: Nuclear Age Peace Foundation http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2002/03/00_steinbach_israeli-wmd.htm) Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum (and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major (if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon - for whatever reason - the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44) Download 196.65 Kb. Share with your friends:
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