{"id":30424,"date":"2019-01-24T13:23:45","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T13:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30424"},"modified":"2019-01-24T13:23:45","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T13:23:45","slug":"satellite-images-show-saudi-arabia-constructs-missiles-factory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=30424","title":{"rendered":"Satellite images show Saudi Arabia constructs missiles factory"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-170301071804049\" readability=\"91.8142076503\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=saudi+arabia+al+jazeera&#038;rlz=1C1GCEU_enQA828QA828&#038;oq=Saudi+Arabia+al+jazeera&#038;aqs=chrome.0.0j69i60j69i59j0l3.2176j0j9&#038;sourceid=chrome&#038;ie=UTF-8\">Saudi Arabia<\/a>\u00a0has constructed its first known ballistic missile factory, a move analysts say could allow the kingdom to manufacture its own ballistic weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Experts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey said on Wednesday that after examining a number of satellite images it appeared the kingdom had constructed a missile base in al-Watah, near the capital Riyadh.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were monitoring a site that was previously associated with being a Saudi missile base and as we continued to monitor the site we noticed &#8230; the construction of buildings related to the testing and production of solid fuel ballistic missiles,&#8221; David Schmerler, whose team helped make this discovery, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We haven&#8217;t really seen this type of construction activity elsewhere in Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia does not have any other large-scale solid fuel production facilities in the country, so this would be a significant leap forward for them being able to develop their own domestic missile programme.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to the Washington Post, Saudi Arabia currently doesn&#8217;t possess nuclear weapons, but\u00a0<span>Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (also known as\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/people\/mohammed-bin-salman.html\">MBS<\/a><span>) has expressed his desire to obtain them, to counter the threat from<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/iran.html\">\u00a0Iran<\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Iran has the largest ballistic missile force in the region and a large chuck of those missiles would be pointed at Saudi Arabia,&#8221; Schmerler said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve been launching missiles out of Yemen using Houthi rebels as a test-bed for attacks against Saudi Arabia. So it would make sends for them to try and look into developing domestic ballistic missiles because they don&#8217;t have that capability at the moment&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saudi Arabia\u00a0has constructed its first known ballistic missile factory, a move analysts say could allow the kingdom to manufacture its own ballistic weapons. Experts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey said on Wednesday that after examining a number of satellite images it appeared the kingdom had constructed a missile base in al-Watah,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":30425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}