The Saudi army has been put on a high state of alert to fend off any possible Israeli attack on the sites for intermediate-range missiles it recently acquied from China, according to American sources quoted this week by the Israeli newspaper Davar.
The sources said the CSS-2 missiles, which have a 2,000-mile range, will be deployed at two separate sites 60 and 375 miles south of Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
The Saudi deputy defense minister, Prince Abed Al-Rahman al-Aziz, condemned Monday what he called Israel “threats” to knock out the missiles. He warned such an act would be “blatant intervention in the internal affairs of the Saudi kingdom.”
An implied threat of an Israeli pre-emptive strike at the missiles was attributed earlier this month to Yosef Ben-Aharon, director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, while he was accompanying Premier Yitzhak Shamir on his visit to the United States.
Ben-Aharon issued a denial, which was affirmed by Shamir when he returned to Israel on March 22.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
