Just in case Congress, Standard and Poors, the markets and Michele Bachmann aren’t keeping your internal anguish meter at maximum reading today, I offer you a truly frightening prospect: Iran gets the Bomb — and Saudi Arabia gets one, too. It is, unfortunately, a very likely prospect. Pervez Hoodbhoy, probably the best known physicist in Pakistan, explains why in a fascinating piece “What Next: A Sunni bomb?” It’s a scary tale that, like so many emanating nowadays from the Middle East, revolves around the Sunni-Shia division in the Muslim world and the days of Charlie Wilson’s war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The bottom line: Shia-led Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are vying for leadership of the Middle East. If Iran gets the bomb (which it almost certainly will), Saudi Arabia will almost certainly follow — with technical help from Sunni-led Pakistan, an exceeding close Saudi ally ever since the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan worked together to fund al Qaeda’s efforts against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Sweet dreams.
Tag Archives: Pakistan
Coming soon: A Sunni bomb.
Filed under nuclear weapons
The UK and Pakistan to be nuclear equals in a decade or less?
Just in case you need to be frightened almost to death, I offer this piece on the state of Pakistan’s nuclear forces from the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, where I ply the editing trade. Here’s the nub of the matter:
The US raid that killed Osama bin Laden has raised concerns about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. In the process of building two new plutonium production reactors and a new reprocessing facility to fabricate more nuclear weapons fuel, Pakistan is also developing new delivery systems. The authors estimate that if the country’s expansion continues, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons stockpile could reach 150–200 warheads in a decade … [along with] nuclear command and control, nuclear-capable aircraft, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles.
But you’ll have to read the whole piece — with its deadpan descriptions of Islamabad’s various new nuclear-capable missiles — to acquire the full, bug-eyed, oh-my-God response.
Filed under Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, military
John Mecklin, writer/editor 