If Iran gets nuclear bomb, Saudi Arabia will follow suit: crown prince

WASHINGTON: Likening Iran’s leader to Adolf Hitler, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince warned in a US television interview that if Tehran gets a nuclear weapon, his country will follow suit.

“Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in an excerpt of the interview that aired Thursday on “CBS This Morning.”

The 32-year-old Prince Mohammed said he has referred to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as “the new Hitler” because “he wants to expand.”

“He wants to create his own project in the Middle East, very much like Hitler who wanted to expand at the time,” Prince Mohammed said.

“Many countries around the world and in Europe did not realize how dangerous Hitler was until what happened, happened. I don’t want to see the same events happening in the Middle East.”

The interview is scheduled to run on CBS’s “60 Minutes” show on Sunday, two days before the crown prince’s scheduled White House meeting with US President Donald Trump.

His comments come amid concerns over nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and just days after the kingdom put an atomic energy program on a fast track.

Saudi crown prince says Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei is “very much like Hitler.” In his first American television interview, the prince tells 60 Minutes his country will get its own nuclear bomb if Iran develops one. https://t.co/wo0W17n8Y0 pic.twitter.com/TjprQTY8rN

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 15, 2018

A 2015 nuclear agreement has placed curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, but Trump has expressed a desire to scrap it, making its future uncertain.

The Saudi cabinet says its nuclear program will be in “full compliance with the principle of transparency” and meet nuclear safety standards “in accordance with an independent regulatory and supervisory framework.”