The Nuclear Shockwave from Doha

“Whenever the wise man points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger.”
In recent days, many have been “the fools” mesmerised by Emmanuel Macron’s finger pointing to the recognition of “the State of Palestine”, which, he claims, is meant to open “an irreversible path to peace”…

The moon itself, however, lay over Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, and Islamabad in Pakistan, where discussions turned to quite different matters: nuclear weapons.
If the Saudi Crown Prince did not find time to join the French president in New York for the grand launch of Palestinian recognition, as initially planned, it is because Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) had other priorities. The foremost being to secure the kingdom after the Israeli aerial strike on Hamas’s headquarters in Doha.
MBS, like his counterpart from the Emirates, Mohammad bin Zayed (MBZ), harbour no fondness for the Al Thani family ruling Qatar — that diminutive but extremely wealthy emirate whose influence has become global, through sports diplomacy, international mediation, and promotion of a rigorous Islam akin to the Muslim Brotherhood. A micro‑state that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi once tried to strangle with an almost four‑year blockade (2017–2021).

Everything shifted with the Israeli strike on Doha. Even though the United States base of Al Udeid (the seat of CENTCOM, commanding U.S. forces in the Middle East) lies just a few kilometres from Qatar’s capital, Trump did not lift a finger to prevent the Israeli strike — though afterwards he expressed considerable irritation. The richly endowed but fragile Gulf Arabs concluded that the American guarantee belonged to a bygone era.

Barely six days after the Israeli attack of 9 September, the Qataris convened an “Arab‑Muslim emergency summit” in Doha, inviting no fewer than 57 states to condemn the aggressor, propose “punitive” responses, even, in the fashion of the Grand Turk, suggest “economic suffocation”.

One even saw the Iranian president, Masoud Pazeshkian — the very man who, in June, had launched missiles at the Al Udeid base — warn that “no Arab or Muslim state is safe from the aggression of the Tel Aviv regime.”

If nothing concrete emerged from that 15 September summit (which, ironically, coincided with the 5th anniversary of the Abraham Accords!), Saudi Arabia pressed further by inviting, on 17 September in Riyadh, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif accompanied by his Defence Minister and senior military officials, to sign a defence accord of unprecedented scope.

Under this “strategic mutual defence agreement,” both parties commit to treating any aggression against one as an attack on both. But the key point is that Pakistan, according to its Defence Minister, makes “its full nuclear capability” (estimated at 170 warheads) available to Saudi Arabia: for the first time, a proliferating state — Pakistan — practices extended deterrence for another state, comparing it even to the American model within NATO. For the first time as well, Saudi Arabia opts to place itself under Pakistan’s nuclear protection, possibly instead of or alongside the historic U.S. protection under the Quincy accords of February 1945 — a quid pro quo of Saudi oil in exchange for American protection.

Islamabad’s military owe much to Saudi money, which for years funded the clandestine nuclear programme led by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s bomb. In 2000, I met the man famed in Pakistan for stealing the centrifuge blueprints from URENCO in the Netherlands and then building the first “Islamic bomb,” claimed as such by his political patron, former Prime Minister Ali Bhutto. Bhutto was hanged in 1979, a year after Pakistan’s first nuclear test, which had been his dream. Khan died in his bed in 2021. He told me he had no difficulty in procuring all the necessary equipment in Europe for his secret military programme — funded by the Saudis, who, he said, visited his facilities regularly…

In the Middle East, the full moon will be nuclear…

P.S. The Iranian vice‑president, Mohammad Estamî, also responsible for the nuclear programme, is in Moscow seeking to acquire eight nuclear reactors…

Pierre Lellouche

25/9/25