Missiles on Parade: The Saudi DF-3

Aaron Stein 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Arms Control Wonk podcast. My name is Aaron Stein, and I contribute to the Arms Control Wonk website. I am also an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, as well as a PhD candidate at King's College.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:15

And I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk, and I'm a scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Aaron 0:22

And you are walking outside, it sounds like.

Jeffrey 0:25

Yeah, that's very annoying. I am relaxing in beautiful Carmel Valley. Oh, excellent. Yeah. Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and they shacked up. This is where they shacked up.

Aaron 0:37

Having spent two years in Monterey, I do miss it, and I do miss the Carmel Valley, especially the wine tasting. Although it's not too bad here in Geneva. Anyways, we'll switch gears to a place that has no wine or wine tasting, and we'll talk about Saudi Arabia today.

Jeffrey 0:52

Which is very funny.

Aaron 0:53

Yeah, and... I've been thinking of it like missiles on parade. It reminds me of my youth and that Rage Against the Machine song, sort of bulls on parade, missiles on parade. The consensus that I'm reading is that this is a signal, that they're coming out of the missile closet, both to tell the United States how unhappy they are with the way the Obama administration has handled the Arab Spring – The Syrian crisis and then the Iranian nuclear issue, as well as telling the Iranians, you know, you may have an enrichment program going forward, but we have the capability to strike you with our own missiles should you go too far out of bounds.

Jeffrey 1:43

Is that the sense that you're getting? Well, I was going to say, I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. I mean, people may not know that the Saudis had a parade. And then in the parade, they rolled a pair of Chinese-made PDF-3 missiles down the tarmac. And although we knew they bought them a long, long time ago, I don't know about you, I have never seen a picture of one before.

So for the first time in 20 years, they emphasized this particular capability. Interesting. 25 years, I guess, which really got my attention. But yeah, I think it's for the reason that you say, which is that the parade is intended as a message to the Iranians.

Aaron 2:28

Yeah, no, I did get ahead of ourselves there. It's certainly a big deal because these missiles have been shrouded in secrecy for so long. I mean, they were purchased in 1987 without telling the United States, which is a major coup at the time and still is. There are now rumors, or I guess one of the reasons I think that they may have felt comfortable parading them around, one was to signal to the Iranians that, As well as, I think, to the United States, but also that they may have newer and nicer missiles.

I mean, I think that there are reports that they have purchased the DF-21, which is more accurate, solid-fueled missile, which gives them greater capabilities vis-à-vis potential adversaries, and that is the Iranians, wouldn't you say?

Jeffrey 3:19

Well, yeah. So Jeff Stein reported earlier in the year, and I had an article following up in Foreign Policy on this, that such a sale had happened. And so, you know, it's not hard to believe that they feel more comfortable showing off the DF-3 now that they have potentially something else in reserve. But I should say one of the things I find so interesting about this is the way this program has transitioned from secrecy to starting to show things off so General Khaled who was the person who purchased the factories from China has a hilarious story about how he went into Hong Kong and then into China to negotiate the purchase of when they were I think in a hotel in Hong Kong and they were looking at the documents they had a Umbrella lined with metal that they used as kind of a hood so that they could look at the documents and nobody could drop on them.

You know, they kind of went from that level of secrecy to not just the parade, but it's fascinating how much information they put out in the public domain. So now the Saudi press routinely covers the strategic missile force. They routinely cover the graduation for the Officers who graduate from their Strategic Missile Force college. And my favorite was there is a picture of the Deputy Minister of Defense holding a glass case with three gold missiles in it.

And two of the missiles are new. I've never seen them before. Maybe one of them is a DS-21. So the 70s are dropping a lot of things.

Aaron 5:12

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I mean, one thing that you're seeing around the region, and I'm thinking particularly in this case because of Turkey, is almost, I want to call it Iranian missile envy. It's that the Iranians have had a successful program and we, being countries in the region, have to catch up. And in many ways this predates this current tiff, I would say, with the Saudis with the United States.

So I wouldn't say that the reason for the parade was – or the reason for the decision to come out of the closet and give more and more information about the missile program was because of problems with the United States. It started before that. I think maybe the parade was – It became a lot easier if you have problems with the United States to simply put your missiles on parade.

But this is a phenomenon that's been going on for a while now, and the Saudis are, I guess— Leading the charge with ballistic missiles, but whereas if you look around the region, I think of the UAE, and I wrote about this on the Arms Control Walk website, is it's the combination of ballistic missile defense, cruise missiles, and in the Saudis' case, ballistic missiles.

I mean, I think they would make the Bush administration proud. They're pairing offense and defense. Moving forward. And in many ways adopting what was the Bush administration's desired deterrent policy, I guess you would call it.

Jeffrey 6:50

Well, you know, they had a thing called the Gulf Security Dialogue, which was intended as a A way of coordinating defense investments among Gulf allies in response to the challenge from Iran. And there was a pretty heavy component of that that involved arms sales. So, for some reason, the Bush administration never wanted to talk about it. I mean, they treated it as an incredibly sensitive thing, and you saw a few references to it in the press.

But they were pretty quiet about it. Which I find really interesting. But that was definitely encouraging countries to buy things like missile defenses. I suspect, though, the UAE bought their cruise missiles from the French, and the Saudis have now bought the same kind from the British, because the British and the French make them together. So what I've never been able to figure out is if the Bush administration is trying to encourage missile defenses as an alternative to those things, Or if they were sort of, you know, encouraging a pretty comprehensive set of responses.

But the goal? Security dialogue. It's a really interesting policy innovation that the Bush administration has that I have not seen written up elsewhere.

Aaron 8:14

I mean, in many ways, the idea of coordinating and making more cohesive the GCC states' military policy, military purchasing policy, command structure... That's been a goal of the United States for a very long time. The Bush administration deserves some credit. Hillary Clinton picked it up in her 2008 campaign, and I think it's become an unstated centerpiece of the Obama administration's Middle East policy as well.

To be honest... I don't think it's going to work. The GCC states have incredible difficulty coordinating on these issues. So I think that these are really bilateral. They're moving towards bilateral. So whether or not the Bush administration encouraged missile defense as a substitute for the storm shadow, I'm not so sure. But they have a very tall task ahead of them, the Obama administration and whoever comes next.

In terms of trying to make the G.C. States a cohesive force against Iran. I see it becoming a really big issue because regardless of how the current negotiations go with Iran, they either have a relatively small enrichment program around whatever number of centrifuges they agree on, or they have more centrifuges because we don't reach an agreement. In any case, Iran retains the right to enrichment and they won't give up their ballistic missiles.

So if you are the Saudis, if you are the Emiratis, if you are the Qataris, you have to begin to start taking steps to prepare for this. And I think that this is also part of the missiles on parade two days ago. We're moving towards a new norm where enrichment in Iran will be accepted and will be legitimized, and they have to prepare for that.

Jeffrey 10:17

Well, so we actually did this study at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. We found this really interesting phenomenon, especially with the Saudis, but also with some of the other Gulf states, which is you would think that getting a deal with the Iranians would take some of the pressure off, right, and it would make the security situation better.

But they have almost exactly the opposite approach. View, which is they've got such a cynical view of the security situation and such a negative view of the Iranians, that they actually reacted to agreements with alarm, right? Because they sort of assumed that the Iranians were going to cheat on them. And so they treated an agreement not as something that improved security, but But as a sign that the United States was like slacking off.

So it actually generated more anxiety than anything else, which I just found fascinating. Because you know, I'm somebody who thinks we actually really don't have great military options. And so diplomatic solution, at least. Without a doubt, far more preferable. But convincing the Saudis of that turns out to be really hard.

Aaron 11:37

Absolutely. I participated in four Chatham House rules dialogue, two in Turkey, three in Turkey actually, one in Doha. And the one in Doha was really interesting because of American sanctions. No Iranians could actually participate. And so we called it the Westerners who were there and we were meeting afterwards and we were discussing it. And it was discussing about Gulf reactions to the Iranian nuclear program.

And because there were no Iranians in the room, there was no diplomatic decorum. And the reactions that came out of the Gulfies' mouths were stuff that people told me I turned white because one of the policy options that was floated was for deploying American tactical nuclear weapons, to which I went absolutely crazy at this and said, no, this is not a good idea.

This will never happen. This will never happen for all the number of reasons that anybody who reads Arms Control Wonk or follows knows why it will never happen. But I'll never forget – Four of the representatives from the different countries came up to me afterwards and asked which aircraft they should instruct their government to buy to make sure it's dual capable, just in case, in the future.

And I'll never forget it because, one, these guys were fairly well – had fair influence in their own government. And two, it just shows that – During the entire discussion across those multiple meetings, the IAEA additional protocol was never thought of as a worthwhile tool in order to detect Iranian diversion. It was assumed they would cheat. And it was said to everybody, to all of us Westerners who were advocating a deal, you don't understand the way the Iranians work.

And then the fourth one was, it was something along the lines of, We're so close and you guys are so far away. We have to deal with them for the rest of our lives and you are just basically a long-term tenant. At some point, your lease will run out to you, the United States, and we'll go home.

It's fascinating to watch unfold for exactly the reasons you just said. And so, again, I think a lot of this muscle flexing on the Saudi side—I also think there's a domestic component, too, because they have a succession issue coming up as well. And the geriatric leadership is about ready to change hands here—is that they're preparing for— The future.

And the United States is still very much a part of that future, but the nature of the Iranian threat is different for us. And we're going to have to deal with that on the U.S. side. We haven't put together any real policy options for it outside of you need to rely more on missile defense. Yeah, well, I can thank the organizers for that.

And I guess this was the one really nice time where sanctions prevented Iranians from participating because we couldn't pay them. We couldn't pay their travel. And so it was just Gulfies from the Gulf states. But Istanbul is much easier. And I will say there are ways to get around sanctions.

Jeffrey 15:07

Have you written anything up from that blog post or something? We can put in a link when we post this podcast.

Aaron 15:15

Yeah, I mean, I was a participant. It was actually done by Roussi, and the two authors of the large report were Michael Stevens and Shashank Joshi. And I wrote a response from the Turkish perspective. I put my Turkish hat on. But a lot of the views are caught up in that report, and it's really fascinating. And I think a lot of it comes from the idea is that The Gulfies and the Turks for that matter keep hitting on the same point.

Why would you reward the Iranians for being – for systematically violating the NPT and their safeguard – IAEA safeguards obligations for close to two decades? And so what you're doing now is basically saying they're okay. Everything that they've done for the last two decades, we're just wiping the slate clean. And you're letting them keep an enrichment program.

And before the details about the conversion of the heavy water reactor, you're going to also let them have a heavy water reactor. And... That's basically what it comes down to. That's the crux of the issue. You're rewarding them for their bad behavior, and why would they not have bad behavior in the future? And I think this has everything to do with the way the Saudis are acting now with their missile force.

Jeffrey 16:36

And the huge public profile. I have to say, by the way, and maybe this is a good place to wrap up to bring it back to, the way that the Saudis have started to communicate this The level of coverage about these units is incredible, given that when they initially started, they denied that these bases even existed. You have the story about how one of the soldiers had called his father, and his father didn't believe that he was actually Floyd, and he told his father, you know, he was on a secret base, and his father thought that he'd actually run off, maybe Girl, is that so good?

And so finally he tells her, like, no, no, I'm at the secret missile base in the desert. And the Saudis are listening to the call, and they, like, freak out. And so the solution is, they, like, go and they get the guy, and they bring him to the base, and they make him be a mom at the base.

And they don't let him leave. And so it's this story about how seriously they took the security. And now... All of these units show up in the press, and there's a particularly hilarious one where they took the leadership, and they had them visit the local religious police, and there was a display of inappropriate clothing that women wear, like T-shirts or joint skirts.

They just really cover even the mundane aspects of life, like what schools are like on the basis. And so as an outside analyst just looking at this, it's a tremendous change. So I guess it's not surprising now that they're showing these things off at a parade.

Aaron 18:15

Yeah, I think before we wrap up, I think we have to at least mention the elephant in the room. I mean, there is a prominent Pakistani army general that was prominently placed in the camera so everybody could see him. Which inevitably will bring up, do the Saudis have a bomb in the basement, a Pakistani bomb in the basement that they could fix to either the DF-3, maybe the DF-21, or even that third missile that nobody quite knows that's in that little display case that you linked to in your foreign policy piece?

Yeah. Well, and what are your thoughts on that? I mean, I tend to be very skeptical, but I'm curious what you think.

Jeffrey 19:03

Yeah, I guess I would say three things. The first thing I would say is that the Pakistani relationship with Saudi Arabia is very, very close. So while we tend to think of Pakistan as our country itself, it also has to be a level of cooperation, maybe. Super high between those two, so it's not at all surprising that Afghanistan would generally be at the parade, totally apart from their side of the equation.

The second thing is there have been rumors for years that the Saudis may have partially financed the Afghanistan nuclear program, which leads to this kind of discussion about whether there's an expectation that Afghanistan would help the Saudis. But I have to say, every time I look at those rumors, You know, they're always sort of well-extended reasons. You know, there's never any kind of hard evidence.

And it seems to me that, you know, it's entirely plausible that the Saudis might believe that in a really tough situation the Pakistanis would come to their aid, and it's entirely plausible that the Pakistanis might worry in a tough situation that the Saudis would come to them. But I've never seen any evidence of a formal agreement or a discussion or transfer of weapons.

The last thing I'd say, because you can pass this a lot, but the last thing I would say is, you know, you treat transferring weapons as though they're Nuclear weapons need to be maintained. They have life expectancy. In fact, many life expectancies for nuclear weapons are not that long. And so it wouldn't just be the provision of a few nuclear weapons.

It would have to be an entire agreement with the provision of the weapons, the servicing of the weapons, the replacement and maintenance. And I've never seen anybody answer any of those kinds of technical questions. How would you actually work something like that And the U.S. has, for example, very elaborate arrangements for forward deployments of their weapons in certain countries.

And it's a lot more complicated than just putting a couple of bombs on a ship and setting them up. So I tend to be pretty skeptical other than the sort of general atmosphere. So maybe someday the 70s will last, but maybe the Chinese can't worry about that.

Aaron 21:36

Yeah, I think one thing that we should not underestimate is the mileage that the Saudis get out of all these leaked stories and the way in which it could enter in some quasi form of deterrence with a WMD armed neighbor, which there used to be a lot of them, who didn't think too highly of the Saudis, Syria, potentially the Iranians.

The Iraqis. And then I tend to agree with everything you said. The one thing that gives me hesitance, that makes me a little hesitant, is the don't mirror. It's Aaron, don't apply the way the U.S. handles weapons to the Saudis and the Pakistanis. And that's the only thing that gives me pause. But I... I tend to agree that there's no evidence there.

There's no there there other than wild speculation that helps the Saudis. And I think putting the Pakistani general where he was placed was very purposeful because it serves this overall purpose of entering... It just enters in some doubt, perhaps, against a potential enemy. And if you're signaled to the Iranians... That, you know, you may have an enriched program, but hey, I have the Pakistani general sitting right next to me.

And, you know, maybe we funded their program. And who knows, maybe we can get a couple, get our hands on a couple warheads. So you better be careful type deal. And that's the extent of it, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we'll take the chance to end it there. But hopefully the Saudis will be even more forthcoming in the coming future and show us more because I think we both like to look at the pictures.

Jeffrey 23:34

Absolutely. I call it wonk porn.

Aaron 23:35

It is wonk porn. All right. Well, thanks for talking and hopefully we'll talk next week. Okay.

Jeffrey 23:41

See you, Aaron.

Aaron 23:41

All right. See you. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye.