‘All bets off’ if Iran attains nuclear weapon: Saudi FM
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Salma Hossein
- . December 12, 2022
- . Update: December 12, 2022 9:12 pm
On Sunday, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia declared that if Iran were to develop a working nuclear weapon, all bets would be out and the Gulf states would take security measures.
In an on-stage interview at the World Policy Conference in Abu Dhabi, Prince Faisal bin Farhan remarked, “If Iran gets a functional nuclear weapon, all bets are off.”
“We are in a very hazardous area of the world, therefore it is to be expected that neighbouring states will think about how to secure their own security,” he said.
In reference to the GCC-China Summit and the Arab-China Summit that were held on Friday, Prince Faisal stated that it is “very crucial” to keep stepping up bilateral collaboration.
“China is the key trading partner for Saudi Arabia, and I believe for nearly the whole Arab world, and having this discourse with the second largest economy in the world is for us critically crucial as we continue to strengthen our partnerships in the global context,” he said.
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The desire to create lasting wealth for the Saudi people, the people in the region, and the people of the world, he continued, served as the primary motivator for the Kingdom’s foreign policy.
“We search for any chance to advance that objective. We will pursue those avenues if there is a chance to collaborate with a partner on a global scale to improve our capacity to expand our social or economic programmes, to strengthen our region, and that can only happen through cooperation,” said the foreign minister.
Prince Faisal said Saudi Arabia, OPEC, and OPEC+ have a “very consistent policy” to maintain a stable market in response to the OPEC+ alliance’s plan to reduce oil output by 2 million barrels per day in October.
“In extremely challenging times, we have worked incredibly hard to ensure market stability. If we go back to 2019–20, when COVID–19 occurred, we had a severe disruption in the oil markets. We observed that prices in some places went to zero, which affected investment in energy production and resulted in market constraints.”
