Tuesday 11 March 2014  Iran's Middle East neighbours 'would not
join a nuclear arms race'  Iran's Middle East rivals have
nothing to gain from a nuclear arms race triggered by the
Islamic Republic acquiring a nuclear bomb and could be stopped
from going nuclear by Western pressure, new research claims.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Photo: AFP/Getty Images
The assumption that states such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and
Egypt would hastily push to acquire a nuclear deterrent if Iran
emerged as an atomic weapons power has underpinned diplomatic
efforts to stop Tehran's nuclear programme.  But Looking Beyond
a Nuclear Iran, a new paper from Centre for Science and Security
Studies at Kings College London, claims that all three states
are in no position to unilaterally acquire nuclear weapons.  As
a result warnings that Iran's development of an atomic weapon
would destroy the non-proliferation regime that has kept the
number of nuclear states in single figures, were overblown.
Christopher Hobbs and Matthew M