22 April 2015

Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program: 5 Things You Need to Know

April 21, 2015 

While the world continues to focus primarily on the threat of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a potentially much greater nuclear threat has emerged just to its east: Pakistan, the Islamic world’s only nuclear-weapons state.

Pakistan is one of the world’s only eight declared nuclear powers and probably the one that causes the most mischief. Pakistan sponsors and harbors militant groups that carry out attacks in all of its neighbors: India, Afghanistan, Iran, and even China.

Although Pakistan argues that its nuclear weapons are well-guarded,many experts are not so sure, pointing out that the Taliban and other militants have frequently struck at supposedly secure military bases with impunity. More worrisome, though, is Pakistan’s history of proliferation, which increases the chance that one day some element or the other in the Pakistani military will provide nuclear materials to an even more dangerous third party—or even to a stable country like Saudi Arabia, which could set off an arms race in the Middle East.

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