Saudi Arabia Parades its Ballistic Missiles

Example of Chinese DF-3/fas.org

For the first time ever the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has publicly displayed its Chinese-made DF-3 (Dong Feng-3) missiles in a parade attended by dignitaries from Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE – all of course fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member states.

The missiles were paraded at the end of the Saudi kingdoms largest military exercise -- the 'Saif Abdullah'.

It was in March 1988 China provided Saudi Arabia DF-3's with conventional warheads. Guesstimates about how many of these missiles the Saudis have range from 30 to 120.

The missile accuracy is very poor and it is of course very antiquated. They have been around since the early 1970's and are the oldest IRBM's China has in its arsenal.

 

Last July satellite images revealed a surface-to-surface missile base located in the Saudi desert – 200km west-southwest of Riyadh – with launch pads pointing these DF-3 missiles, which have a range of approximately 2500km, at Tel Aviv and Tehran respectively. 

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On the topic of Saudi-Iran relations Arash Karami at Al-Monitor last week wrote up an analysis about the controversy stirred among hard-liners in Iran over a warm meeting between Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani and the new Saudi appointed ambassador to Iran, Abdulrahman Bin Groman Shahri. Throughout the course of the meeting Mr. Rafsanjani made clear his desire to see a reduction in the tensions between the two nations stressing that, "If the two countries are harmonized on regional issues and the Islamic world, seditionists will not be able to induce differences between Muslims."