Pakistan Watches Iranian Nuclear Assassinations

 

Despite stringent security measures, Pakistan remains a ‘soft’ target. A key area to watch: exposing Pakistani nuclear personnel to foreigners under the garb of UN or academic interactions.


 Pakistan—The clockwork mystery assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists pose an important security question for Pakistan, the next-door nuclear-armed nation whose strategic programs have been demonized in British and American media.
The latest attack occurred in Tehran on Wednesday, killing a chemistry expert linked to the country’s main nuclear agency, the Iran Atomic Energy Organization.
Pakistan must be watching this development closely. Iran accuses the United States, the UK and Israel of involvement.

Pakistan’s experiences in pursuing nuclear technology are different to Iran’s. But Islamabad has been a target no less. What helped Pakistan is its high diplomatic stature on the world stage and strong network of ties with key nations.
For example, while the possibility of threat from Israel has been real, both Islamabad and Tel Aviv managed to establish some form of communication through third countries to avoid fatal misunderstandings.
Israel has curiously refrained from talking about Pakistan’s nuclear and strategic programs [not even in the Israeli media]. But unlike Israel, the Brits and the Americans have been vocal, often through official design, in spreading fear and disinformation about the safety of Pakistani nukes.
Washington has become more hostile toward Pakistan in the past decade, spreading fear about Pakistan’s nukes where none exist. To American embarrassment, a more immediate nuclear security threat emerged in Japan, a US ally, with catastrophic consequences that continue to exist.
The key question here is this: Pakistan will probably never go assassinating individuals involved in the nuclear programs of other countries, but what would Islamabad do if someone creates a list of Pakistani nuclear experts and begins to assassinate them one by one? Or targets them for recruitment as Trojans or saboteurs?
Pakistan has been firm in protecting its nuclear personnel and installations. But even then the country is overall ‘soft’ in protecting itself. Foreign operatives from the US, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and former Soviet Union have breached Pakistani security at different stages.
For example, diplomats and intelligence agents from France and the United States were caught in Pakistan red handed attempting to spy on Pakistani nukes.
A new level of security breach occurred in 2007 and continues until now with the induction into power individuals with known links to foreign governments and intelligence agencies.
And Afghanistan continues to be an anti-Pakistan outpost under the control of US, NATO and India.
Islamabad is trying to normalize ties with US, which means resetting US ties from ‘high-level meddling’ to ‘normal diplomatic ties’.
Until this situation is resolved, no level of security is too much in Pakistan’s case.
A key area to watch for Pakistan is the level of access it gives the outside world to its nuclear community.
The Strategic Plans Division [SPD] of Pakistan’s National Command Authority [NCA] is the government agency monitoring this access. It is a world-class operation, designed and implemented twelve years ago.
SPD’s security blueprint is the latest in the world. Many countries interested in civil nuclear applications are studying this model.
Despite its high-level security model, SPD needs to study how the names of Iranian nuclear experts and scientists leaked through the UN and IAEA. This is not to say the two international bodies were willing instruments of spying on Iran. But the information they collected – including names, identities and designations of key Iranian nuclear officials — ultimately fell in the hands of foreign spy agents who are now assassinating them one by one.
So, until Pakistan makes the transition from a ‘soft’ to a ‘strong’ state, it needs to watch closely how Iran’s nuclear establishment is being cornered and terrorized. This sets a new model of coercive containment of a potential nuclear-armed nation. And it’s a model that those in charge of nuclear security must watch closely.
[See Iran’s official letter to UN Security Council, General Assembly and Secretary General on the latest assassination.]