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Why Did Saudi Arabia Buy Chinese Missiles?
The real question is why are we only hearing about it now.
BY JEFFREY LEWIS | JANUARY 30, 2014, 7:53 PM
eff Stein of Newsweek has reported that “a well-placed intelligence source” has confirmed that Saudi Arabia purchased Chinese-made DF-21 ballistic missiles in 2007 — apparently with the approval of the George W. Bush administration.
It’s the first intelligence source to confirm, albeit anonymously, something that’s long been rumored. It is a good bit of reporting — and I say this not simply because Stein quotes me. If Saudi Arabia bought the missiles in 2007, it has taken a long time for a reporter to get a source to actually confirm the suspected sale. But the timing of the leak isn’t surprising. Saudi Arabia is growing increasingly concerned about Iran, and over the past few years it has started talking a lot about its Strategic Missile Force. In the course of doing so, Riyadh has hinted that it has bought at least two new types of ballistic missiles — one of which is possibly the medium-range DF-21, which, in China, comes in both conventional and nuclear flavors.
The Saudi Strategic Missile Force dates to the 1980s, when Prince Khalid bin Sultan — then commander of the Air Defense Force — traveled to China to purchase DF-3 missiles. The Dong Feng 3, or “East Wind 3,” is also medium-range and nuclear-capable, but it uses liquid fuel and is not very mobile. So, many folks expected that the Saudis would eventually replace or augment it, either with another purchase from China or with one from Pakistan. In 1999, Prince Sultan, then the defense minister, visited Kahuta Research Laboratories in Pakistan, where A.Q. Khan was enriching uranium and building copies of North Korea’s Nodong missile, which Pakistan calls the Ghauri. At the time, one U.S. administration official told the New York Times that the visit was “definitely eyebrow raising.”
A few years ago, Jonathan Scherck, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, published a book called Patriot Lost, alleging that China delivered new DF-21 ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia in 2003-2004. (He has also written a thinly veiled screenplay.) Although Scherck occasionally veers toward the conspiratorial, he’s believable when he sticks to what he knows. The book’s passages about how the intelligence community monitors changes in missile deployments by tracking construction at bases and the shipping practices of certain Chinese proliferators struck me as informed. Some of his details are wrong, and Scherck clearly wrote the book from memory, which is a fragile thing. But the U.S. government is concerned enough that it’s pursuing legal action to seize any money Scherck’s made on the book and prevent its further distribution. He’s not making all this up…..
It used to be that Saudi Arabia did not want to call attention to its budding missile force. Khalid shrouded his ‘80s trip to China, and the ensuing shipments, in secrecy. Although news of the sale eventually broke, and although information about Saudi Arabia’s new missile bases near Sulayyil and Jufayr appeared in the press, Saudi officials kept mum.
In his 1996 memoir, Desert Warrior, Khalid finally shared a few details. He tells an anecdote that captures the initial Saudi concern for secrecy. Khalid recalls how a young soldier stationed at one of the bases revealed its location to his father over the telephone, unaware that his calls were monitored. The old man, according to Khalid, figured his kid was up to no good and lying about being posted to a secret missile base in the desert. Khalid, initially not sure what to do about the breach of operational security, claims he ultimately decided to relocate the old man and make him the base’s imam in order to keep him quiet. I don’t know if the story is true — maybe Khalid was just trying to refute rumors that the bases were staffed by Chinese — but the point is that, other than Khalid’s memoir, Saudis simply didn’t talk much about the Strategic Missile Force. Until now.
What’s changed, of course, is Iran. As concern grows in Riyadh about Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, the Saudi press is simply talking a lot more about the country’s arsenal of conventionally armed ballistic missiles. There is also the Internet, where there is a lot of easy-to-find chatter about Saudi capabilities. The result is a field day for open-source analysis.
Saudi officials have been more transparent as well. For example, in 2010, Khalid — by then deputy defense minister — cut the ribbon on a new headquarters building in Riyadh for the Strategic Missile Force. Saudi officials released a number of images of the building, both inside and out, and you can see it in satellite photos.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/30/why-did-saudi-arabia-buy-chinese-missiles/
I don't know about foreingpolicy.com, but this anon was hearing about it before 9-11