The UK’s Guardian newspaper has run a story claiming that Saudi Arabia is looking at the idea of acquiring nuclear weapons or, alternatively, of a military alliance with a country which would provide it with nuclear cover.

The story is ludicrous. Saudi Arabia has no ambitions to establish itself as a regional military superpower, and does not have a nuclear-energy industry that can produce the plutonium necessary for such weapons. The country has far more important things to spend its money on — on schools and colleges, hospitals and clinics, on job creation and helping new businesses to set up shop here. These are Saudi Arabia’s priorities. Defense is, of course, any government’s prime responsibility, but there is no sign of any nuclear threat to the Kingdom, not now or at any point in the future — which puts paid to the second suggestion. In any event, other than within the bounds of NATO, nuclear cover is not something that any non-nuclear nation has yet been able to acquire or that any nuclear one has ever been willing to provide. Saudi Arabia is not on the verge of changing its present friends and allies.

So why this fantasy report, citing an undisclosed “strategic paper” that no one else has heard of?

The sad truth is that the Guardian seems to be only too willing to accept as truth any anti-Saudi spin that comes from any quarter and will print any rubbish about the Kingdom, no matter how blatant a lie so long as it casts the country in bad light. It is old-fashioned disinformation and propaganda.

There is, though, one element of truth in the Guardian’s fantasy. It reports, as an alternative to nuclear weapons or nuclear cover, the possibility of Saudi Arabia working for a nuclear-free pact in the Middle East. But there is nothing new about this; the government has canvassed the idea in the past. It makes profound sense. Israel’s nuclear arsenal, now estimated to contain as many as 200 devices, is frightening; the possibility of Iran going nuclear is worrying, even though Riyadh and Tehran are on close terms; the Middle East, with its many problems, cannot afford the dangers that merely having nuclear arms would create.

But how to move this forward? A pan-Arab agreement on a nuclear-free region is not an impossibility, but the region stretches effectively all the way to Pakistan. It is not going to act without India, and India is not going to act merely for the sake of the Middle East. But the Israelis are the major block. They are not going to give up their weapons unless forced to do so by the US, and there is no chance of that. Washington makes great play shouting about Iran’s and Pakistan’s nuclear potential, but keeps silent about Israel’s. Such hypocrisy destroys any chance of a nuclear-free Middle East.