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Gulf Insider
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Insider
Israel's Failed Plot to Stop Pakistan's Nuclear Bomb
Former CIA Director George Tenet thought him 'at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden' and former Mossad Chief Shabtai Shavit regretted not killing him. But to almost 250 million Pakistanis, Abdul Qadeer Khan – the godfather of Pakistan's nuclear programme – is a legend and national hero. The nuclear scientist, who was born in 1936 and died in 2021 aged 85, was more responsible than anyone else for the South Asian nation developing a nuclear bomb. He ran a sophisticated and clandestine international network assisting Iran, Libya and North Korea with their nuclear programs. One of those nations, North Korea, ended up getting the coveted military status symbol. Israel – itself a nuclear power, although it has never admitted it – allegedly used assassination attempts and threats to try and stop Pakistan from going nuclear. In the 1980s Israel even formulated a plan to bomb Pakistan's nuclear site with Indian assistance – a scheme that the Indian government eventually backed out of. AQ Khan, as he is commonly remembered by Pakistanis, believed that by building a nuclear bomb he had saved his country from foreign threats, especially its nuclear-armed neighbor India. Today many of his fellow citizens agree. 'Why not an Islamic bomb?' Pakistan first decided to build a bomb after its larger neighbor had done so. On 18 May 1974 India tested its first nuclear weapon, which it codenamed Smiling Buddha. Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto immediately vowed to develop nuclear weapons for his own country. 'We will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own,' he said. There was, he declared, 'a Christian bomb, a Jewish bomb and now a Hindu bomb. Why not an Islamic bomb?' Born during British rule of the Indian subcontinent, AQ Khan completed a science degree at Karachi University in 1960 before studying metallurgical engineering in Berlin. He also went on to study in the Netherlands and Belgium. By 1974 Khan was working for a subcontractor of a major nuclear fuel company, Urenco, in Amsterdam. The company supplied enriched uranium nuclear fuel for European nuclear reactors. Khan had access to top secret areas of the Urenco facility and blueprints of the world's best centrifuges, which enriched natural uranium and turned it into bomb fuel. In January 1976 he made a sudden and mysterious departure from the Netherlands, saying he had been made 'an offer I can't refuse in Pakistan'. Khan was later accused of having stolen a blueprint for uranium centrifuges, which can turn uranium into weapons-grade fuel, from the Netherlands. That July he set up a research laboratory in Rawalpindi which produced enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. For a few years the operation proceeded in secret. Dummy companies imported the components Khan needed to build an enrichment program, the official story being that they were going towards a new textile mill. While there is significant evidence indicating that Pakistan's military establishment was supporting Khan's work, civilian governments were generally kept in the dark, with the exception of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (who had proposed the initiative). Even the late prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's daughter, was not told a word about the programe by her generals. She only found out about it in 1989 by accident – in Tehran. Iranian President Rafsanjani asked her whether they could reaffirm the two countries' agreement on 'special defense matters'. 'What exactly are you talking about, Mr President?' asked Bhutto, confused. 'Nuclear technology, Madam Prime Minister, nuclear technology,' replied the Iranian president. Bhutto was stunned. Assassination attempts and threats In June 1979, the operation was exposed by the magazine 8 Days. There was an international uproar. Israel protested to the Dutch, who ordered an inquiry. A Dutch court convicted Khan in 1983 for attempted espionage (the conviction was later overturned on a technicality). But work on the nuclear program continued. By 1986, Khan was confident Pakistan had the capability to produce nuclear weapons. His motivation was in large part ideological: 'I want to question the holier-than-thou attitude of the Americans and British,' he said. 'Are these bastards God-appointed guardians of the world?' There were serious efforts to sabotage the program, including a series of assassination attempts widely understood to have been the work of Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad. Executives at European companies doing business with Khan found themselves targeted. A letter bomb was sent to one in West Germany – he escaped but his dog was killed. Another bombing targeted a senior executive of Swiss company Cora Engineering, which worked on Pakistan's nuclear program. Historians, including Adrian Levy, Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Hanni, have argued that the Mossad used threats and assassination attempts in a failed campaign to prevent Pakistan from building the bomb. Siegfried Schertler, the owner of one company, told Swiss Federal Police that Mossad agents phoned him and his salesmen repeatedly. He said he was approached by an employee of the Israeli embassy in Germany, a man named David, who told him to stop 'these businesses' regarding nuclear weapons. The Israelis 'didn't want a Muslim country to have the bomb', according to Feroz Khan, a former official in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. In the early 1980s Israel proposed to India that the two collaborate to bomb and destroy Pakistan's nuclear facility at Kahuta in Pakistan's Rawalpindi district. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved the strike. A plan developed for Israeli F-16s and F-15s to take off from the Jamnagar airbase in India's Gujarat and launch strikes on the facility. But Gandhi later backed out and the plan was shelved. In 1987, when her son Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister, the Indian army chief Lieutenant General Krishnaswami Sundarji tried to start a war with Pakistan so India could bomb the nuclear facility at Kahuta. He sent half a million troops to the Pakistani border for military drills, along with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles – an extraordinary provocation. But this attempt at triggering hostilities failed after the Indian prime minister, who had not been properly briefed on Sundarji's plan, instigated a deescalation with Pakistan. Despite Indian and Israeli opposition, both the US and China covertly helped Pakistan. China provided the Pakistanis with enriched uranium, tritium and even scientists. Meanwhile, American support came because Pakistan was an important Cold War ally. US President Jimmy Carter cut aid to Pakistan in April 1979 in response to Pakistan's program being exposed, but then reversed the decision months later when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan: America would need the help of neighboring Pakistan. In the 1980s, the US covertly gave Pakistani nuclear scientists technical training and turned a blind eye to its program. But everything changed with the end of the Cold War. In October 1990 the US halted economic and military aid to Pakistan in protest against the nuclear program. Pakistan then said it would stop developing nuclear weapons. AQ Khan later revealed, though, that the production of highly enriched uranium secretly continued. The seventh nuclear power On 11 May 1998 India tested its nuclear warheads. Pakistan then successfully tested its own in the Balochistan desert later that month. The US responded by sanctioning both India and had become the world's seventh nuclear power. And Khan was a national hero. He was driven around in motorcades as large as the prime minister's and was guarded by army commandos. Streets, schools and multiple cricket teams were named after him. He wasn't known for playing down his achievements. 'Who made the atom bomb? I made it,' Khan declared on national television. 'Who made the missiles? I made them for you.' But Khan had also organized another, particularly daring, operation. From the mid-1980s onwards, he ran an international nuclear network which sent technology and designs to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He would order double the number of parts the Pakistani nuclear program required and then secretly sell the excess on. In the 1980s the Iranian government – despite Ayatollah Khomeini's opposition to the bomb on the grounds that it was Islamically prohibited – approached Pakistan's military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, for help. Between 1986 and 2001, Pakistan gave Iran key components needed to make a bomb, although these tended to be secondhand – Khan kept the most advanced technology for Pakistan. The Mossad had Khan under surveillance as he travelled around the Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s, but failed to work out what the scientist was doing. Then-Mossad chief Shavit later said that if he had realised Khan's intentions, he would have considered ordering Khan to be assassinated to 'change the course of history'. Gaddafi exposes the operation In the end, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi blew Khan's operation in 2003 while attempting to win support from the US. Gaddafi disclosed to the CIA and MI6 that Khan was building nuclear sites for his government – some of which were disguised as chicken farms. The CIA siezed machinery bound for Libya as it was being smuggled through the Suez Canal. Investigators found weapons blueprints in bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner. When the operation was exposed, the Americans were horrified. 'It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before,' a senior American official told the New York Times. 'First, [Khan] exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. 'Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments.' In 2004 Khan confessed to running the nuclear proliferation network, saying he had provided Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear technology. In February, he appeared on television and insisted he had acted alone, with no support from the Pakistani government, which then swiftly pardoned him. President Musharraf called him 'my hero'. However, reportedly under US pressure, he placed Khan under effective house arrest in Islamabad until 2009. Later AQ Khan said that he 'saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself'. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 but recovered after surgery. Enormously wealthy, in his later years, Khan funded a community centre in Islamabad and spent his time feeding monkeys. Those who knew him said Khan firmly believed what he had done was right. He wanted to stand up to the west and give nuclear technology to non-western, particularly Muslim, nations. 'He also said that giving technology to a Muslim country was not a crime,' one anonymous acquaintance recalled. When Khan died of Covid in 2021, he was hailed as a 'national icon' by then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. And that is how he is still widely remembered today in Pakistan. '[The] nation should be rest assured Pakistan is a safe atomic power,' the nuclear scientist had declared in 2019. 'No one can cast an evil eye on it.' Also read: Iran-Israel Conflict: US President Donald Trump Receives Nobel Peace Prize Nomination For Ceasefire Deal
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Business Standard
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Business Standard
Smiling buddha to Operation Shakti
On the morning of May 18, 1974, at 8:05 sharp, some 110 kilometres from Jaisalmer in Rajasthan's Thar desert, the push of a button announced India's entry into the closed club of nuclear nations. The reverberations of that test, conducted underground in arid Pokhran, and called Pokhran-I (codename Smiling Buddha), were felt around the world. With this detonation, India had become the only country outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the P5, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China – to have conducted a confirmed nuclear weapons test. China had tested its first just 10 years ago, in 1964, two years after the Indo-China war. India termed it a 'peaceful nuclear explosion', but it was in effect a decisive and unequivocal declaration that it had nuclear capability. The country's nuclear journey gained pace in the late 1950s under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru through Project Phoenix. It was mainly to promote civilian nuclear energy, but with physicists like Homi Bhabha, the 'father of the Indian nuclear programme', laying the groundwork for weapons development. The Atomic Energy Act of 1962 gave further control to the central government over atomic energy resources. After Nehru died in 1964, the efforts shifted mostly towards peaceful goals under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Gandhian scientist Vikram Sarabhai. However, with Shastri's successor, Indira Gandhi, the momentum towards weaponisation resumed. A small, secret team of scientists and engineers worked through the 1960s and early 1970s to build the necessary infrastructure and technical capabilities. The 1971 Indo-Pak war, during which the US sent warships to the Bay of Bengal, further galvanised India's resolve, culminating in Gandhi authorising the development of a nuclear test device in 1972. India had already opposed joining the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which it saw as discriminatory. In later years, while it participated in negotiations for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), it did not ratify it for the same reasons. Pokhran-I invited strong, sharp reactions from the world. India faced immediate sanctions. Major nuclear suppliers shut their doors to it. Less than a year later, led by the US, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was formed to restrict and regulate the supply of nuclear material and know-how to countries that hadn't ratified the NPT. The US further tightened export controls by passing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, 1978. An editorial in The New York Times read: 'Such great talent of resources has been squandered on the vanity of power, while 600 million Indians slip deeper into poverty. The sixth member of the nuclear club may be passing the beggar bowl before the year is out.' India continued with its programme through the '80s and '90s, aware that neighbouring Pakistan was also acquiring nuclear capability. Meanwhile, the original five nuclear weapons states kept a close eye on India, which had by now opened its economy to the world. Twenty-four years after Smiling Buddha, the hot, barren Pokhran would once again witness a country's determination to exercise its sovereign right to security, despite the intense scrutiny and the threat of sanctions. It was again in the month of May, when average temperatures in Pokhran hover above 40 degrees Celsius, that India conducted its second test – a series of five nuclear tests, actually; three on May 11 and two on May 13, 1998. Pokhran-II, codenamed Operation Shakti, with the devices named Shakti-I through Shakti-V, carried out under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also invited intense criticism from the global community. Besides the Western world, countries in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and Malaysia also reacted adversely. While India stood its ground, it made known its 'no-first-use' policy. India's record since has established it as a nuclear-responsible country. In 2008, it signed a civil nuclear agreement with the US, and the same year, it received a waiver from the NSG. It has since signed civil nuclear cooperation agreements with Japan, Australia, South Korea, France and Vietnam, among other countries.
Express Tribune
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Impregnable and invincible
Listen to article As the nation proudly celebrated Youm-e-Takbeer, it was highly indebted to the luminary nuclear scientists, the visionary political leadership and the resilient civil, military bureaucracy that underwent all odds for decades, but never compromised on its security and sovereignty. The Chagai May 28, 1998 atomic tests were in response to India's provocative jingoism of 'Smiling Buddha', and surely Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan and Dr Samar Mubarakmand deserve our praise and salutation. Likewise, former PM Nawaz Sharif's apt decision to call the Indian bluff blessed Pakistan with the desired deterrence to stand tall among the comity of nations. This nuclear threshold has come to guard Pakistan as New Delhi opted for aggression early this month, and the befitting response from our armed forces and the nation is more than enough to keep the Hindutva-dispensation well within its limits. Pakistan, as the seventh nuclear power in the globe and the only one in the Islamic world, is a power to be reckoned with. Moreover, its impregnable defence exhibited its glory and the world, including India, today recognises its superiority in all forms and manifestations. The lethal response in self-defence, after four days of Indian onslaught, not only surprised the pundits of doom in India but also made global strategists come out in praise of Pakistan as it never let loose interstate and diplomatic ethics. Now is the time to build on that treasure trove and let the nation unite on a single cardinal principle: no to submission, and no compromise on security. There is an opportunity in disaster for India to start talking to Pakistan, and iron out the intricate differences on the diplomatic front. The two states have fought four wars: 1948, 1965, 1971 and 2025. More to it is the Kargil episode of 1999, and countless skirmishes, border clashes and intrusions. But the outcome is single-pointer: the dispute of Kashmir is in need of being resolved. Now India's shenanigans such as abrogating Kashmir's special status and suspending IWT are self-defeating in the long run. As Islamabad has offered to talk, it's time to demonstrate leadership and bury the hatchet for a better tomorrow.
News18
19-05-2025
- Politics
- News18
Why Did Indira Gandhi Offer To Share India's Nuclear Technology With Pakistan In 1974?
Last Updated: US Embassy cables leaked by Wikileaks in 2013 reveal the offer came months after India's 1974 nuclear test, with Indira Gandhi's Parliament statement cited from July 22, 1974 Did Indira Gandhi once offered to share India's nuclear technology with Pakistan? According to US Embassy cables released by Wikileaks in 2013, this offer was made just months after India's first nuclear test, codenamed Smiling Buddha, in 1974. The cables mentioned Indira Gandhi's statement in Parliament on July 22, 1974. According to WikiLeaks, Indira Gandhi stated, 'I explained the peaceful and economic objectives of this test in a letter to (Zulfikar Ali) Bhutto and said that India is ready to share its nuclear technology with Pakistan, just as it does with other countries." The declassified US Embassy cables released by Wikileaks stated that after conducting the first nuclear tests in 1974, Indira Gandhi later extended a hand of cooperation by reportedly offering to share nuclear technology with the neighbouring country. According to the Wikileaks cables, Indira Gandhi made this offer in a letter to Pakistan's then-prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, explaining that India's nuclear ambitions were peaceful and economically driven, aimed at boosting oil and gas reserves. In her letter dated July 22, 1974, Gandhi dismissed Bhutto's concerns about radioactive leakage, asserting that the wind was not blowing towards Pakistan at the time of the test. This proposal reportedly came at a time of heightened tensions following the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, during which India had captured around 93,000 Pakistani soldiers. According to various accounts, many have since debated whether Indira Gandhi's decision to return these prisoners without securing a concrete agreement was a diplomatic misstep. Nevertheless, her reported offer three years later, to share nuclear technology with Pakistan was viewed by some as a significant peace initiative. However, according to sources, the offer was ultimately rejected by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Indira Gandhi's confidence in pursuing peaceful nuclear advancement was met with international scepticism and led to the imposition of strict technical sanctions on India. According to several reports, the formation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was a direct response, aimed at preventing countries outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), like India, from further developing their nuclear capabilities. Pakistan, meanwhile, went on to conduct its first nuclear test in 1998 just two weeks after India's second round of nuclear tests, signalling the start of a new phase in the regional arms race. The Wikileaks revelations have reignited debate on social media around this historic episode, with opinions divided on whether Indira Gandhi's offer to share nuclear technology was a genuine peace initiative or a politically naive move. Watch India Pakistan Breaking News on CNN-News18. Get breaking news, in-depth analysis, and expert perspectives on everything from politics to crime and society. Stay informed with the latest India news only on News18. Download the News18 App to stay updated! First Published:
India.com
18-05-2025
- Politics
- India.com
Pokhran 1974: India's first nuclear test was delayed by 5 minutes due to...
Representational Image/AI-generated Pokhran nuclear test: On May 18, 1974, exactly 51 years ago, India shook the world by conducting its first nuclear test at the Indian Army's Pokhran Test Range, deep inside the barren Thar desert in Rajasthan. Under Pokhran-I, codenamed the 'Smiling Buddha', India successfully detonated a nuclear fission bomb, joining a select group of elite nations with nuclear weapons capability. Why India's first nuclear test was delayed? A little known incident from the historic day of May 18, 1974 is that India's first nuclear test faced a delay of around five minutes. Let us find out why. According to details, while all preparations for the nuclear test were complete, and a scaffold was set up five kilometers away where top military officials and scientists were to witness the detonation. As the scheduled time started winding down, scientist Virendra Sethi was asked to inspect the test site for one final time. However, after completing the inspection, Sethi's jeep broke down, forcing him walk two kilometers on foot to reach the control room, due to which the test was conducted at 8:05 AM, a five-minute delay from its scheduled time of 8 AM. How India's nuclear dream became a reality? India becoming a nuclear power as early as 1974, less than three decades after independence, was a remarkable achievement by a country which was still marred by economic and food insecurity, fought multiple wars with its hostile neighbors, defied the US hegemony, and yet showed the resilience and fortitude to become a strong military power. Apart from the iron-willed leadership of Indira Gandhi– India's then Prime Minister– the Pokhran nuclear test was the fruit of seven long years of hard work by a team of brilliant nuclear scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, who worked tirelessly on developing India's nuclear capabilities. The 75-member team, which also included India's rocket pioneer Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, led by then BARC director Dr. Raja Ramanna, worked laboriously from 1967 to 1974 on India's top secret nuclear project, which culminated with the country's first nuclear test on May 18, 1974. Dr Kalam would later go on to lead India's second series of nuclear test under Pokhran-II in 1998. India's Iron Lady Indira Gandhi and the Pokhran nuclear test During a 1972 visit to BARC, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had reported given verbal permission to scientists to build a plant for nuclear testing. The whole operation was highly classified, and no country, not even the United States, was kept in the loop, till the day of test. India's surprise nuclear test infuriated the US who imposed a wave of sanctions on the country, including halting the export of nuclear material and fuel to India. But during this crucial hour, India found support from the Soviet Union (USSR), a staunch adversary of the US during the Cold War days. Indira Gandhi's stance on nukes differed from Shastri, Nehru Notably, India's top political leadership differed in their opinion about whether India should weaponize nuclear capabilities. India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru maintained an ambivalent stance on the development of nuclear weapons, despite growing security concerns in wake of the 1962 India-China war, and Beijing's nuclear test at Lop Nur in 1964. Lal Bahadur Shastri, who succeeded Nehru as Prime Minister, also resisted domestic pressure for India to develop nuclear weapons, and instead attempted to secure security guarantees from nuclear powers during his 1964 UK visit. However, Indira Gandhi's stance on nuclear weapons are completely opposite to her predecessors, including her late father. After coming to power in 1966, Indira Gandhi essentially gave a green signal to BARC scientist to develop nuclear weapons capabilities, and ensured that the project was kept top secret, away from prying eyes of New Delhi's rivals, who could've attempted to sabotage the operation by any means possible. Ultimately, owning to Indira Gandhi's resolve, and the tireless hard work of our nuclear scientists, India conducted its first nuclear test on May 18, 1974, at the Pokhran Test Range in the remote Thar desert in Rajasthan.
