WASHINGTON: Likening Iran’s leader to Adolf Hitler, Saudi Arabia’s crownprince warned in a US television interview that if Tehran gets a nuclearweapon, his country will follow suit.“Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without adoubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon aspossible,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in an excerpt of theinterview that aired Thursday on “CBS This Morning.”
Crown Prince Mohammed said he has referred to Iran’s supreme leaderAyatollah Ali Khamenei as “the new Hitler” because Khamenei hasexpansionist desires“He wants to create his own project in the Middle East, very much likeHitler” Crown Prince Mohammed said in reference to Hitler’s desire toconquer his European neigbors at the time.
“Many countries around the world and in Europe did not realize howdangerous Hitler was until what happened, happened. I don’t want to see thesame events happening in the Middle East.”The interview is scheduled to run on CBS’s “60 Minutes” show on Sunday, twodays before the crown prince’s scheduled White House meeting with USPresident Donald Trump.His comments come amid concerns over nuclear proliferation in the MiddleEast and just days after the kingdom put an atomic energy program on a fasttrack.Although intended to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil, analysts warnthe capacity to produce atomic energy could open a pathway to nucleardevelopment for military purposes.A 2015 nuclear agreement has placed curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, butTrump has expressed a desire to scrap it, making its future uncertain.The Saudi cabinet says its nuclear program will be in “full compliance withthe principle of transparency” and meet nuclear safety standards “inaccordance with an independent regulatory and supervisory framework.”
The country has accelerated plans to build 16 nuclear reactors over thenext two decades, according to officials and analysts, at a cost of around$80 billion.
Saudi Energy Minister Khaled Al-Faleh said in October that the nuclearprogram would start by building two reactors, each producing between 1.2and 1.6 gigawatts of electricity. – Agencies