U.S. Dance with Pakinstan and Iran Over Nuclear Programs
BY Herschel Smith
18 years, 2 months ago
The U.S. is in an intricate dance with Pakistan, balancing concerns over a potentially unstable regime armed with nuclear weapons with the need for access to troubled provinces as well as A. Q. Khan, the father of the nuclear program in Pakistan. This dance must end at some point, and the Taliban must be defeated while information is also mined concerning the Iranian nuclear program.
Since the intense pressure in 2001 on Pakistan to take sides in the GWOT, the U.S. has been in a tricky and tenuous dance with Musharraf. Pakistan is armed with nuclear weapons, and the father of this program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, is widely regarded as a hero in Pakistan for putting Pakistan on even ground with India.
Pakistan also has strong elements of radical Islam in its intelligence services, but Musharraf has claimed that its nuclear weapons are under strict custody and will not fall into the wrong hands. But the U.S. administration has taken the position that Musharraf, while weak in his handling of the radical elements in Pakistan, is better than the alternative should a coup topple his government.
It was a made-for-main-stream-media confession that Musharraf gave recently concerning their nuclear proliferation:
Musharraf claims he only suspected that Khan was passing secrets to Iran and North Korea until the then CIA director George Tenet confronted him with proof at the United Nations in 2003.
“(Tenet) passed me some papers. It was a centrifuge design with all its numbers and signatures of Pakistan. It was the most embarrassing moment,
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