Saudi Arabia has imported sensitive missile technology from the Chinese military and is building its own ballistic missiles, raising new concerns of a Middle East arms race, according to Saudi advisers and officials familiar with US intelligence.
The Saudi effort is the latest in a series of moves by US allies in the Middle East to increase military cooperation with China, which has angered the Biden administration during a period of heightened hostility between Washington and Beijing.
The Saudi government has sought help from the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, the missile arm of the Chinese military, said an official familiar with Saudi advisers and US intelligence. The advisers and the official said that these talks have actually reached the stage of securing hardware from the Chinese military.
Ballistic missiles are powered by rockets that propel them upward in an arch-shaped trajectory before landing toward their target on the surface of the Earth. They can be used to deploy both conventional and nuclear weapons.
The US has long denied selling ballistic missiles to Riyadh over proliferation concerns. The state received Dong Fang-3 missiles from China in the 1980s and publicly displayed them in 2014.
The advisers and the official said the Chinese military has also transferred several batches of Dong Fang-series missiles from 2018 onwards, ready by the spring of this year. US intelligence agencies have raised concerns about the transfers, but the Biden administration has been reluctant to impose consequences on Saudi Arabia, a strategic partner in the region.
One of the officials familiar with US intelligence said the US was preparing to impose sanctions on Chinese actors over missile transfers, but not on Saudi officials or institutions.
A spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council declined to comment. Chinese officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Saudi Arabia’s extensive regional power struggle with Iran is probably its main motivation for developing ballistic missile technology. Analysts say the Saudi government wants to counter Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal.
Analysts say the development of Riyadh’s own ballistic missile program could also complicate negotiations with Iran to withdraw the 2015 international nuclear deal. Iran has demanded that other ballistic missile programs in the region, notably Israel, also be subject to discussion in the talks.
“Iran’s activities are clearly creating a knock-on effect in the region and the regional arms race,” said Yoel Guzanski, a former member of Israel’s National Security Council and current senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.
Progress in Saudi Arabia’s program comes as Middle East countries fear the US is no longer ready to play a decisive role in the region, a sentiment that was halted in Saudi Arabia in 2019 when the Trump administration militarily Oil fields were affected in the alleged attack on Saudi Iran when Saudi Arabia did not respond.
“There is a perception of a weak American commitment to their security in Riyadh,” said Becca Wasser, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank. “The idea that the only way Saudis can defend themselves is to rely on themselves.”
Saudi Arabia is also engaged in a long-running war in Yemen, where Houthi rebels repeatedly attack Saudi Arabia using drones and ballistic missiles. More than 10,000 people have been killed since Saudi Arabia launched military strikes on Yemen in 2015.
Riyadh’s quick work on its ballistic missile program is the latest move by US allies in the Middle East to explore closer military ties with China. The development was first reported by CNN on Thursday.
This spring, US intelligence agencies learned that China was secretly building a military facility at a port in the United Arab Emirates, as The Wall Street Journal reported last month.
The Biden administration warned the Emirati government that the presence of Chinese military in its country could jeopardize relations between the two countries. Construction at the facility was halted after several rounds of meetings and visits by US officials.
The Journal reported last year that China had helped Saudi Arabia build a facility to make uranium yellowcake, an early step on the path to a civilian nuclear power program or nuclear weapons capability.
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