# Pakistan Helped Shape Iran’s Nuclear Story. Now It’s Hosting US Peace Talks | In Our Defence | S3 | Ep 48

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 24 Apr 2026, 56 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71610992/24_apr_26_defence_24_april_128.mp3

In this episode of In Our Defence, we step away from the predictable outrage and look at the harder, more interesting question: why does Pakistan remain useful in high-stakes geopolitics despite its long record of contradictions? Host Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan unpack Pakistan's complicated ties with the United States, its uneasy relationship with Iran, its growing closeness to Saudi Arabia, and the larger truth that diplomacy is often driven less by morality and more by access, leverage, geography and utility. They discuss the irony of how Pakistan with its history of having helped seed Iran's nuclear program is now helping broker talks that hinge on Tehran agreeing to give up its nuclear capabilities. The two also get into the Osama bin Laden episode, the strange durability of US-Pakistan ties, and the role "middlemen" play in crises where nobody fully trusts anybody. Tune In! Produced by Taniya Dutta Sound mixed by Rohan Bharti

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Welcome to season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
[0:08] Speaker 2: takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
[0:12] Speaker 2: Dave Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
[0:15] Speaker 2: and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
[0:19] Speaker 2: to decode all things to do with India security and
[0:23] Speaker 2: explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
[0:27] Speaker 2: stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
[0:32] Speaker 1: This is in our Defense. Hello, and welcome to that defense.
[0:37] Speaker 2: The guns have fallen silent kind of in the Middle East,
[0:42] Speaker 2: the Gulf West Asia, however you want to call the
[0:45] Speaker 2: region for the last couple of weeks. Just this morning,
[0:48] Speaker 2: as we record on Wednesday, the episode should be out
[0:50] Speaker 2: on a Friday. Just this morning, President Donald Trump has
[0:53] Speaker 2: announced the extension of a ceasefire in the ongoing conflict
[0:57] Speaker 2: with Iran that began on the eighth, So it will
[1:00] Speaker 2: be nearly close to two months by the time this
[1:03] Speaker 2: episode comes out.
[1:04] Speaker 1: The action has moved from.
[1:06] Speaker 2: Me Inland Iran to then the Strait of horm Moose,
[1:09] Speaker 2: which is this narrow seaway very important for global oil shipping.
[1:13] Speaker 2: Twenty percent of global corude flows through there. A lot
[1:17] Speaker 2: of the Gulf oil flows through the state of Foremus.
[1:19] Speaker 2: The state of Hormus currently is in the state of
[1:22] Speaker 2: let's say, Limbo. The US has said it has successfully
[1:24] Speaker 2: blockaded it. Iran says some of its ships have been
[1:28] Speaker 2: able to sort of punch through the US blockade and
[1:31] Speaker 2: you know, sail out our sale back in. What we
[1:34] Speaker 2: know is that the economy has taken a hit. Oil
[1:37] Speaker 2: supplies are still in short supply, and this is going
[1:41] Speaker 2: to have a far reaching impact on the rest.
[1:43] Speaker 1: Of the world.
[1:45] Speaker 2: The action from there now also, by the way, has
[1:47] Speaker 2: sort of moved to Pakistan, which is going to be
[1:49] Speaker 2: the topic of discussion on this episode, where a second
[1:53] Speaker 2: round of peace talks between a Run and the US
[1:55] Speaker 2: was supposed to be held sometime this week. It's so
[1:58] Speaker 2: far as we record this, we don't really know what's happening.
[2:00] Speaker 2: The US delegation that was supposed to leave earlier this
[2:02] Speaker 2: week has not left yet because Iran has not only
[2:05] Speaker 2: promised to.
[2:05] Speaker 1: Show up for that meeting.
[2:09] Speaker 2: On this episode, we're going to sort of try and
[2:11] Speaker 2: understand the reason why Pakistan seems to be playing the
[2:16] Speaker 2: role it is, the incentives and the motivations that Pakistan
[2:20] Speaker 2: may have behind trying to play a piece negotiator in
[2:24] Speaker 2: the ongoing conflict, and also why this situation is very absurd,
[2:28] Speaker 2: as this war itself has been has been quite absurd,
[2:31] Speaker 2: as my guest to call the stupid war, but the
[2:35] Speaker 2: situation itself is quite absurd, and it's not really for
[2:38] Speaker 2: the reason you may be thinking of. But we'll sort
[2:40] Speaker 2: of get to that. Hey, they've got to be back
[2:44] Speaker 2: again another week of this stupid or absurd war, like
[2:49] Speaker 2: you call it.
[2:50] Speaker 3: That's a stupid piece, isn't it. Yeah, it's like, you know,
[2:53] Speaker 3: you know what the hell is going on.
[2:55] Speaker 2: No one knows what the hell is going on, and
[2:57] Speaker 2: no one knows what the hell will happen. Because I
[2:59] Speaker 2: think it's it's a question I wanted to ask you.
[3:03] Speaker 2: I think actually towards the end of the episode, I
[3:06] Speaker 2: think we'll start off with that.
[3:07] Speaker 1: Do you think the fighting is over?
[3:11] Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, see, obviously we can't presume and
[3:14] Speaker 2: assume everything, but if you look at it, moti motive,
[3:17] Speaker 2: if you look at it logically, though logic does not
[3:19] Speaker 2: apply many cases and trumpets involved, but there's a very
[3:22] Speaker 2: very minute chance of actual fighting the kind we saw
[3:25] Speaker 2: in the first couple of weeks of this conflict actually resuming,
[3:29] Speaker 2: because now it's really an attempt from both sides to
[3:31] Speaker 2: sort of Salva's this and just keep.
[3:33] Speaker 1: This going on.
[3:34] Speaker 3: So yeah, I think I kind of tend to agree
[3:37] Speaker 3: with that, despite the fact that I say this knowing
[3:40] Speaker 3: the kind of US forces that are there in the
[3:42] Speaker 3: West Asia theater.
[3:43] Speaker 2: There's one more carrier, by the way, there's a third
[3:45] Speaker 2: carrier strike group that's headed there.
[3:47] Speaker 3: That's it's crossed the largical African thing, the George Bush.
[3:50] Speaker 3: It's somewhere off the east coast of Africa, so that
[3:53] Speaker 3: should be reaching West Asia very soon. But there are
[3:56] Speaker 3: two carrier strike groups.
[3:57] Speaker 1: In the region.
[3:58] Speaker 3: There is one amphibious ready group in one ARG and
[4:02] Speaker 3: a second one that should be reaching around the.
[4:04] Speaker 1: Same time as the George Bush.
[4:06] Speaker 3: Now this is, you know, interesting, because you have huge
[4:11] Speaker 3: enormous US forces in the region, three carriers strike groups,
[4:15] Speaker 3: the third one coming in of course, two arg's submarines.
[4:20] Speaker 3: Let's not forget a lot of stealth aircraft as well,
[4:23] Speaker 3: parked on air bases in West Asia, Jordan, all of
[4:27] Speaker 3: those places. So there literally hundreds of aircraft, something like
[4:31] Speaker 3: a thousand Tomahawk missiles. So we're just doing a ballpark
[4:34] Speaker 3: figure calculation. On Godub Show, we said that something like
[4:37] Speaker 3: a thousand TOMAHWK missiles that are there. But you know,
[4:42] Speaker 3: my sense is that the US has kind of exhausted
[4:45] Speaker 3: the the hard parer part of what they plan to
[4:49] Speaker 3: do with Epic Fury. They realized that the Iranians can
[4:53] Speaker 3: absorb a lot of punishment, right, they hit, the Iranians
[4:56] Speaker 3: hit back, and that continues, and there's no way that
[4:59] Speaker 3: they're going to deploy boots on ground. It doesn't it
[5:01] Speaker 3: seems unlikely. Even all those operations that we discussed in
[5:05] Speaker 3: previous installments of your show don't seem to be happening,
[5:11] Speaker 3: primarily because they're so risky. The boots on ground could
[5:15] Speaker 3: end up sucking the US into a Vietnam War kind
[5:18] Speaker 3: of situation. So that's something that they don't want. So
[5:23] Speaker 3: this is a stalemate of sots. You're looking at them
[5:28] Speaker 3: trying to work out the best deal through negotiations, through
[5:35] Speaker 3: this off ramp that Pakistan is offered, and it's an
[5:39] Speaker 3: honorable exit that Trump is looking at where he can say, look,
[5:42] Speaker 3: you know, I've done this thing. I've got the best
[5:45] Speaker 3: deal that he wants a deal, right, I want the
[5:47] Speaker 3: best deal. That's six American presidents never got out of Iran.
[5:50] Speaker 3: I've destroyed then away. If you've seen his latest truth
[5:53] Speaker 3: social post. I've destroyed the Iranian Navy, have destroyed their
[5:56] Speaker 3: air force. I've done this. I've done that. No American
[5:59] Speaker 3: president has done this. And I withdraw, you know, and
[6:02] Speaker 3: they have agreed to give whatever guarantees. But the crux
[6:05] Speaker 3: is that two big things that it's now narrowing down to.
[6:09] Speaker 3: One is, of course the highly enriched uranium that Iran
[6:13] Speaker 3: is already enriches, believed to have four hundred and forty
[6:15] Speaker 3: kilos of it. And the second is, of course the
[6:20] Speaker 3: enrichment process itself, all of their facilities that the infrastructure
[6:25] Speaker 3: of in you know, refining uranium. That is something that
[6:30] Speaker 3: the US wants a cap on, wants the Iranians to
[6:34] Speaker 3: cap it for twenty years. Iranians is saying, no, we'll
[6:37] Speaker 3: do it for five. So this is where the bargain
[6:40] Speaker 3: bargaining is on. You know, It's it's like a flea market.
[6:44] Speaker 3: I want twenty, No, I'll give you five, No for ten,
[6:46] Speaker 3: So they finally end at ten and they would draw.
[6:49] Speaker 3: That's what it looks like. And of course there is
[6:50] Speaker 3: that blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is hurting Iran.
[6:54] Speaker 3: I mean, let's not face you know, it's it is
[6:58] Speaker 3: a problem with Iran because they can't export any of
[7:01] Speaker 3: their oil, natural gas. Is it is squeezing their economy.
[7:06] Speaker 3: It's heavily dependent on energy exports. They can't import anything either.
[7:10] Speaker 3: They can't resupply their you know, weapon stocks, so it's
[7:15] Speaker 3: a bit of an impasse. And of course they continue
[7:16] Speaker 3: to block the Strait of Holm. So it's a Mexican
[7:19] Speaker 3: standoff which possibly would end in some kind of a
[7:23] Speaker 3: JCPOA kind of deal which Obama got out of Iran
[7:27] Speaker 3: way back in twenty sixteen, seventeen.
[7:29] Speaker 1: What's that?
[7:30] Speaker 3: That is a deal that the Iranians got where they
[7:33] Speaker 3: said that they would you know, curb their refinement uranium
[7:38] Speaker 3: enrichment process in return for access to the global market.
[7:42] Speaker 3: Sanctions would be lifted and stuff. So when Trump came out,
[7:45] Speaker 3: it wasn't sixteen. I think it was before that, because
[7:47] Speaker 3: Trump towed that up in seventeen and he says, oh,
[7:49] Speaker 3: it's a terrible deal. I don't believe in this. You know,
[7:52] Speaker 3: he went after the Iranians in the first round and
[7:54] Speaker 3: he's done that. That was of course diplomatic, but the
[7:57] Speaker 3: second term he's kind of gone all on the Iranians
[8:01] Speaker 3: and he's realized that, look, without a ground invasion, that
[8:04] Speaker 3: it's not you have to physically defeat the Iranian regime.
[8:08] Speaker 3: If you can't, you can't dictate terms. Sitting in Washington, DC,
[8:12] Speaker 3: Iranians are going to attack you with lego memes. You know,
[8:17] Speaker 3: that's it. That's all you're going to get from there.
[8:21] Speaker 3: So they discovered, to their horror, that's what.
[8:23] Speaker 1: Let me do one thing.
[8:24] Speaker 2: Let's meet Iran at a hotel, the Serena Hotel, and
[8:30] Speaker 2: let's you know, try and get the deal that Obama
[8:32] Speaker 2: had signed many years with.
[8:33] Speaker 1: That go back, okay, but it's me signing it this time.
[8:36] Speaker 1: So that's what is better than Obama's deal.
[8:38] Speaker 2: Of course, a bigger Boulder signature by the way, so
[8:42] Speaker 2: that's right, bigger pen as well.
[8:45] Speaker 1: Right.
[8:45] Speaker 2: So, Pakistan, like I said, is going to be the
[8:48] Speaker 2: topic of discussions deep and one of the core issues is,
[8:52] Speaker 2: you know, there's been a lot of social media ridicule
[8:55] Speaker 2: around this topic where people have found the concept idea
[9:00] Speaker 2: of Pakistan holding or being being host to peace talks
[9:05] Speaker 2: sort of absurd. But I think primarily people sort of
[9:08] Speaker 2: see it with this picture that this is a country
[9:10] Speaker 2: that's been known to export and ferment and financial terrorism,
[9:13] Speaker 2: especially against India. So how can a country like that
[9:16] Speaker 2: be sort of an ideal destination to.
[9:19] Speaker 1: Hold peace talks.
[9:20] Speaker 2: But I don't think that's really the reason I find
[9:21] Speaker 2: it absurd, because you know, if you believe that logic,
[9:24] Speaker 2: then you don't really understand geopoltices that well, which does
[9:26] Speaker 2: not really function on the on the on the by morality.
[9:31] Speaker 2: Let's say we've discussed this previously. The world of geopolti
[9:33] Speaker 2: is quite dirty when it comes to stuff like this.
[9:36] Speaker 2: But I find the topic the idea of Pakistan holding
[9:39] Speaker 2: peace talks absord is is because of something that you
[9:42] Speaker 2: wrote about this week is and that's something that's going
[9:44] Speaker 2: to be the core topic this this week, this on
[9:47] Speaker 2: this episode, and uh, let's look at it this way.
[9:52] Speaker 2: There's this one core issue at the center of this.
[9:55] Speaker 2: All you strip away all the different arguments we've heard
[9:58] Speaker 2: over the last two three weeks of why you has
[10:00] Speaker 2: had to anyvade Iran, the threat to Israel, etcetera, et cetera,
[10:02] Speaker 2: et cetera, The core issue remains.
[10:04] Speaker 1: Uh.
[10:05] Speaker 2: And this is something the US has been always one
[10:07] Speaker 2: day and different presidents that Iran can never possess the
[10:11] Speaker 2: ability to manufacture a nuclear bomb. Over years, Iran has
[10:17] Speaker 2: apparently shown signs of being able to sustain a very
[10:22] Speaker 2: limited nuclear program that could one day, you know, help
[10:24] Speaker 2: it do that.
[10:26] Speaker 1: Uh. So you're holding peace talks to end.
[10:30] Speaker 2: That ability, the question being how did this ability come
[10:33] Speaker 2: out of the picture in the first place.
[10:35] Speaker 3: The ability Iran's nuclear ability is very clear, came from Pakistan.
[10:41] Speaker 1: It's as simple as that.
[10:42] Speaker 3: It's it's like what what was one said in the
[10:46] Speaker 3: during the War on Terror days?
[10:48] Speaker 1: Uh?
[10:49] Speaker 3: That the linkage between Pakistan's deep state and the Taliban
[10:52] Speaker 3: are as clear as the sun in the sky. And
[10:56] Speaker 3: here again it's uh. The Pakistani nuclear support to Iran's
[11:02] Speaker 3: nuclear weapons and Iran's nuclear enrichment program is as clear
[11:07] Speaker 3: as the sun in the sky. Everybody knows it. The
[11:09] Speaker 3: United Nations knows it, the Iean knows it, the United
[11:13] Speaker 3: States knows it.
[11:14] Speaker 1: Pakistan, of course knows it.
[11:15] Speaker 3: We know it. Everybody knows this. It is the most
[11:18] Speaker 3: open secret in the world, except that it happened a
[11:23] Speaker 3: long time ago. I guess that's why Public Memory is.
[11:26] Speaker 1: Shot, which is why this episode two.
[11:28] Speaker 3: Thousand and three, that's the year that it all begins,
[11:31] Speaker 3: and that is the year when George W. Bush was
[11:35] Speaker 3: all set to invade Iraq WMDs. They had WMDs and
[11:40] Speaker 3: Colin pal went waving that little bottle in the UN
[11:44] Speaker 3: Security Council, and I think they'd invaded in March. March
[11:48] Speaker 3: two thousand and three, they invaded Iraq, they defeated the
[11:52] Speaker 3: Saddam Hussein regime. They had their mission accomplished moment, and
[11:56] Speaker 3: it turned out to this horrible insurgency that cost them
[12:00] Speaker 3: millions of dollars and thousands of American lives. But there
[12:04] Speaker 3: was a side show to that.
[12:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So take us to that in deep I
[12:08] Speaker 2: read a piece a couple of days ago when you
[12:11] Speaker 2: wrote it, and like you said, public Memory is actually
[12:13] Speaker 2: very short. And you know, even me, as somebody who's
[12:18] Speaker 2: read up bits and pieces about this, I remember the keywords.
[12:21] Speaker 1: I remember, you know.
[12:22] Speaker 2: I remember the word nuclear politication, I remember the term
[12:26] Speaker 2: I remember the person. Ah, you can't, but I do
[12:28] Speaker 2: remember the full story. I got some of it from
[12:30] Speaker 2: your piece, but I want to know now. So this
[12:33] Speaker 2: ability that we talk about so when you talk about
[12:36] Speaker 2: enrich uranium, when you talk about Iran having Iran saying
[12:39] Speaker 2: it has a civil nuclear program. But like we've discussed
[12:42] Speaker 2: on this on this podcast, civil nuclear programs usually usually
[12:48] Speaker 2: had justificalave to hide your strategic because both go sort
[12:51] Speaker 2: of handed.
[12:51] Speaker 3: That's right, and it's about the enrichment levels.
[12:53] Speaker 1: Really, yea, you want to you want.
[12:55] Speaker 3: A civil nuclear program, you don't enridge to sixty and
[12:58] Speaker 3: eighty you you're with five and six percent. That's all
[13:02] Speaker 3: it takes. Right, The Iranians have been enerching to a
[13:04] Speaker 3: very high extent, and that suggests that they are heading
[13:08] Speaker 3: towards the bomb.
[13:10] Speaker 2: So give us a backstory of how did Iran get
[13:12] Speaker 2: to where it dead knowing that post ninety, post seventy nine,
[13:17] Speaker 2: post eighties, this was amongst the most sanctioned countries in
[13:21] Speaker 2: the world, which, you know, What's something that is difficult
[13:23] Speaker 2: for many people I talk to, even in the newsroom,
[13:25] Speaker 2: for them to wrap their heads around, is how is
[13:28] Speaker 2: it that countries like North Korea, countries like Iran, who've
[13:31] Speaker 2: spent so many years, decades almost in isolation, either forced
[13:36] Speaker 2: or self impost how do they end up possessing technologies
[13:39] Speaker 2: that are you know, the domain of just a very
[13:41] Speaker 2: chosen few.
[13:42] Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's really to answer that first before
[13:45] Speaker 3: I go back into what actually happened. Yeah, it is
[13:48] Speaker 3: a question of priorities, right if it is a priority
[13:51] Speaker 3: for the state, If nuclear weapons are a priority for
[13:55] Speaker 3: the state, then they will get it. It is not
[13:57] Speaker 3: such a big deal. After all, it's something that the
[14:00] Speaker 3: US did eight years ago. It's within the realm of
[14:04] Speaker 3: possibility for a lot of countries to do it now.
[14:07] Speaker 3: And that is the reason that you have, you know,
[14:10] Speaker 3: sanctions on you have the NPT for instance, to prevent
[14:13] Speaker 3: countries from prevent that club from expanding, you know, into
[14:18] Speaker 3: the double digits. Right now that that club is in
[14:20] Speaker 3: the single digits. You have the five, you have North Korea, Pakistan, Israel,
[14:25] Speaker 3: and India.
[14:25] Speaker 1: It's nine.
[14:26] Speaker 3: They do not want a tenth country to have nuclear weapons,
[14:28] Speaker 3: as clear as that, right. But if a country sets
[14:32] Speaker 3: its mind to it, it will get it. And it's
[14:36] Speaker 3: all a matter of you know, big borrow steel. If
[14:38] Speaker 3: you think that the existence of your country depends on
[14:41] Speaker 3: a certain capability, then they will get it. And this
[14:43] Speaker 3: is exactly what I think. The best line to sum
[14:46] Speaker 3: this up is Zulfi Bhutto in the sixties sixty six.
[14:51] Speaker 3: He's believed to have said this that we will eat grass,
[14:54] Speaker 3: but we will have the bomb. Right, he said that
[14:56] Speaker 3: in sixty six or sixty seven. And he had this
[14:59] Speaker 3: meeting in seve twenty two in was it Babalpoo, No,
[15:04] Speaker 3: it was in Multan. He had this meeting in Multan
[15:08] Speaker 3: where he assembled the top people of the military technological
[15:13] Speaker 3: thing and he said, look, we need to have the bomb.
[15:16] Speaker 3: This was after the bisection of Pakistan into you know, Bangladesh,
[15:20] Speaker 3: and Bangladesh had broken away after the seventy one war.
[15:24] Speaker 3: And you know, you're looking at a country in seventy
[15:27] Speaker 3: one which hadn't even you know, as someone said very uncharitably,
[15:33] Speaker 3: that Pakistan hasn't even figured out the art of doing needles, right,
[15:37] Speaker 3: you know, fine needles. And they wanted to get the bomb.
[15:41] Speaker 3: But look at it this way. Seventy two, eighty three,
[15:45] Speaker 3: Pakistan is cold tested a weapon. Eighty four, they've got
[15:48] Speaker 3: the bomb twelve years now. How it happened is, of course,
[15:52] Speaker 3: it's not just technological thing. They went. They leveraged everything
[15:56] Speaker 3: that they had. They they got stolen technolog from Aq
[16:01] Speaker 3: Khan through his network. He was a metallurgist working in
[16:05] Speaker 3: the Netherlands. They got the blueprints from China, They got
[16:08] Speaker 3: the enriched uranium from China. So it was a combination
[16:11] Speaker 3: of many things. But the fact is that they had
[16:14] Speaker 3: a laser focus on getting the weapon. It doesn't matter
[16:17] Speaker 3: if if you beg Borrow Steele, as Mao said, I
[16:20] Speaker 3: don't care if that cat is black or white, as
[16:22] Speaker 3: long as it catches mice. This is what they did.
[16:25] Speaker 3: They got the bomb, and then they had to finance
[16:29] Speaker 3: the program. They had to finance the weaponization. They had
[16:32] Speaker 3: to run covert wars in India. They needed money, and
[16:37] Speaker 3: that is when they started nuclear trafficking. And that is
[16:42] Speaker 3: when the stories starts to unravel. In two thousand and three,
[16:46] Speaker 3: when the US has made such a big song and
[16:50] Speaker 3: dance about this axis of evil, which is North Korea,
[16:53] Speaker 3: Iran and Iraq, these countries that are a threat to
[16:58] Speaker 3: the world. They were looking for new enemies after the
[17:00] Speaker 3: Cold War's been a decade plus after.
[17:02] Speaker 1: The Cold War.
[17:03] Speaker 3: You need new enemies. These are the three new enemies
[17:06] Speaker 3: who cannot have WMDs, and they start going after the
[17:11] Speaker 3: weakest of the three, which is Iraq, which doesn't have
[17:13] Speaker 3: any WMDs. The Iranians are on their way. No one knows,
[17:18] Speaker 3: and they're horrified. That's another big revelation in two thousand
[17:20] Speaker 3: and three, which I'll come to. The North Koreans, of course,
[17:23] Speaker 3: they're like inward looking hermit kingdom. But the Iraqis are
[17:26] Speaker 3: actually the most exposed because they've been hammered already in
[17:29] Speaker 3: ninety one. Whatever WMD's they had, Saddam destroyed, so he
[17:34] Speaker 3: kept it a secret that he had no WMDs. He
[17:38] Speaker 3: would never confirm. The regime would never conform because they
[17:40] Speaker 3: were afraid that if they said we have no WMDs,
[17:42] Speaker 3: the Iranians will attack them. So the Americans, regardless, went
[17:48] Speaker 3: after Saddam. Bush was hell bent on unseating him. It
[17:53] Speaker 3: was like an unfinished operation from his father's term. Now
[17:58] Speaker 3: suddenly there's a lot of interest activity from the Libyan side,
[18:02] Speaker 3: the Gadaffies through Saif Gadaffi, because he's got contacts. He
[18:06] Speaker 3: studied in London and he reaches out to some people
[18:08] Speaker 3: there and he says, hey, listen, we want we need
[18:11] Speaker 3: to talk. And he reaches out of the bridge and say, look,
[18:14] Speaker 3: we have a WMD program as well. We'd like to
[18:16] Speaker 3: surrender it because they were frightened. Right, Gadaffi was afraid
[18:21] Speaker 3: that if word got out that he had a WMD thing,
[18:26] Speaker 3: the Americans would come after him.
[18:27] Speaker 1: So it was survival.
[18:28] Speaker 3: The data had to survive, right, and they surrendered everything
[18:32] Speaker 3: to IAEA. They didn't have a bomb program. The only country, incidentally,
[18:38] Speaker 3: they've that has surrendered an entire nuclear weapons program is
[18:43] Speaker 3: South Africa in the early nineties, and that is because,
[18:47] Speaker 3: of course they were afraid that the black government would
[18:51] Speaker 3: get it. So it was the white minority government that
[18:53] Speaker 3: had perfected it. They surrendered everything, all their enriched uranium,
[18:57] Speaker 3: their weapons, everything, so all dismantled. Kadafi became the second
[19:03] Speaker 3: was not quite there. It was like years away from
[19:06] Speaker 3: getting a bomb.
[19:07] Speaker 1: He surrendered everything.
[19:08] Speaker 3: He surrendered his materials, He surrendered his blueprints, blueprints and
[19:13] Speaker 3: you know where the blueprints, how they came. When the
[19:16] Speaker 3: inspectors opened the blueprints, they found, My goodness, these are
[19:19] Speaker 3: packed in bags from a tailor's shop in Islamabad, eight
[19:27] Speaker 3: kilometers away from that hotel. The arena whatever Good Look
[19:31] Speaker 3: Tailors is the name of the shop, and there are
[19:35] Speaker 3: bags and bags of blueprints. They open it and they
[19:38] Speaker 3: can't believe it. And the blueprints are for a Chinese
[19:41] Speaker 3: nuclear weapon, the Chi C four, which was tested by China.
[19:46] Speaker 3: I think it was a fourth nuclear test way back
[19:48] Speaker 3: in sixty six or nineteen sixty seven. So Chinese nuclear
[19:53] Speaker 3: bomb blueprints given to Pakistan, which had cold tested it
[19:57] Speaker 3: in eighty three, and the Chinese hot tested that weapon
[20:00] Speaker 3: for them in eighty four. So this weapon is a
[20:05] Speaker 3: twelve or thirteen kiloton weapon, roughly the kind that was
[20:10] Speaker 3: detonated in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and that blueprint was sold to Gatherafee.
[20:15] Speaker 3: Now it's very clear that money had changed hand. That
[20:20] Speaker 3: is when they started going down this rabbit hole and
[20:23] Speaker 3: they discovered there was this guy called aq Khan Abdul
[20:26] Speaker 3: Kadir Khan, a metallurgist who ran this Khan Research Laboratories
[20:32] Speaker 3: in Pakistan, which was very key to getting the Pakistani
[20:35] Speaker 3: nuclear weapon. And he was running, as they called it
[20:40] Speaker 3: back then, a nuclear walmart. He was supplying designs, components,
[20:46] Speaker 3: everything for anyone who wanted it. And they discovered, to
[20:49] Speaker 3: their horror that Pakistan was the only country that had
[20:55] Speaker 3: sold technology nuclear enrichment technology to North Korea. They had
[21:02] Speaker 3: sold it to Iran, and they had offered bomb blueprints
[21:06] Speaker 3: to Iraq, so one country supplying all three access of
[21:09] Speaker 3: evil partners. And in two thousand and three, again there's
[21:13] Speaker 3: another critical moment where mahmadal Baradai, who's the I inspector
[21:19] Speaker 3: into WMDs, He's led into this hall in this place
[21:24] Speaker 3: called Nathans where the Iranians have just started their enrichment facilities,
[21:29] Speaker 3: and he shown some centrifuges and he Barada brings along
[21:34] Speaker 3: a metallurgist friend of his from I think he was
[21:37] Speaker 3: in the company that Akugan worked in Urenko, and they
[21:41] Speaker 3: showed him the centrifuges and he said, my god, these
[21:45] Speaker 3: are the exact centrifugures that I worked on back there
[21:47] Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy five. And it turns out that these
[21:50] Speaker 3: centrifuges were based on the German G one G twos
[21:55] Speaker 3: which Khan had stolen from the Netherlands Urenko where he
[21:59] Speaker 3: worked in brought it to Pakistan. The Pakistani scientists and
[22:04] Speaker 3: of course backed by the military, built these centrifugurees as
[22:07] Speaker 3: the P one and the PED two, and then they
[22:10] Speaker 3: sold these two Iran Now, for the benefit of our viewers,
[22:15] Speaker 3: what is a centrifuge. A centrifugue is a specialized device
[22:20] Speaker 3: which spins at very high speed. It's like a cigar container.
[22:25] Speaker 3: Like a cigar container is that pig. A centrifuge is
[22:28] Speaker 3: exactly the same, but it's about six seven feet high
[22:31] Speaker 3: and it moves at very high speed ten thousand rpm.
[22:37] Speaker 3: So to give you an idea of how fast that is.
[22:40] Speaker 3: A washing machine, your washing machine spins at abound twelve
[22:42] Speaker 3: hundred rpm. This one is ten times that. And they
[22:46] Speaker 3: operate in what are called cascades. Literally thousands of them
[22:50] Speaker 3: are doing nothing but spin, and over several months of enrichment,
[22:53] Speaker 3: when you put in uranium hexafluoride, which is a crystalline
[22:57] Speaker 3: substance which is derived from yellow cake, uranium hexafluoride is
[23:02] Speaker 3: spun in those centrifuges and you two three five is
[23:07] Speaker 3: extracted from you two three eight. Now you two three
[23:10] Speaker 3: five is what will give you your bomb grade uranium. And
[23:13] Speaker 3: that is the whole game. You keep enriching and reaching
[23:16] Speaker 3: and reaching until the time that you get to about
[23:18] Speaker 3: ninety percent. When you hit ninety percent, then you're ready
[23:21] Speaker 3: to make a bomb. The Pakistanis had already figured it
[23:24] Speaker 3: out from the Aqkan blueprints. By like I said, they
[23:28] Speaker 3: by eighty three they were already cold testing nuclear weapons.
[23:32] Speaker 3: We had tested in India had tested in seventy four,
[23:35] Speaker 3: they cold tested in eighty three. The Chinese are believed
[23:39] Speaker 3: to have tested hot tested a weapon for them in
[23:41] Speaker 3: eighty four, so they were a nuclear weapons par by
[23:44] Speaker 3: eighty four. They had a certain number of devices. And
[23:46] Speaker 3: that is when you see a change in Pakistan's attitude
[23:50] Speaker 3: towards India where they believe that they have parity with
[23:54] Speaker 3: India and India cannot strike at them militarily conventional military
[23:59] Speaker 3: thing and because they will use nuclear weapons. And during
[24:04] Speaker 3: the time of General's Mirza Islam Bay and Pervez Mush
[24:09] Speaker 3: they perfect this nuclear weapons enabled terrorism, which is the
[24:13] Speaker 3: shield of nuclear weapons protecting the sword of terrorism led
[24:17] Speaker 3: by a thousand cuts.
[24:18] Speaker 2: Very interesting, and you know, this is actually the reason
[24:21] Speaker 2: I wanted to sort of have this discussion because it
[24:24] Speaker 2: sort of helps us, you know, away from the rhetoric
[24:27] Speaker 2: and the jingoism. This also helps us understand what are
[24:31] Speaker 2: Pakistan's motivations when it comes to geopolitics and the way
[24:35] Speaker 2: it operates in the world. Taking forward from what you
[24:40] Speaker 2: were talking about, right now, so this is a period
[24:42] Speaker 2: when the US obviously needed Pakistan very much.
[24:44] Speaker 1: This is just after just after.
[24:46] Speaker 2: Nine eleven and that decade long warrant terrorism, which back
[24:50] Speaker 2: then US did not think would take a decade, but
[24:52] Speaker 2: it took much more than that. So this was just
[24:55] Speaker 2: the beginning, is the period referred to, and over the
[24:57] Speaker 2: next few years the US would really really come to
[25:00] Speaker 2: end on Pakistan as like you know, we've discussed forward
[25:02] Speaker 2: sort of sort of staging basics. Was his access point
[25:04] Speaker 2: into Afghanistan for everything.
[25:08] Speaker 1: Which perhaps explains why.
[25:11] Speaker 2: The US would be sort of, you know, okay to
[25:13] Speaker 2: look look away from what Pakistan had done. All this
[25:15] Speaker 2: evidence that he talked about sort of turn blind, iye
[25:17] Speaker 2: do all of that. What doesn't explain is sort of
[25:22] Speaker 2: the end or maybe the midpoint of this war on terror,
[25:26] Speaker 2: the time when the US finally managed to take out
[25:28] Speaker 2: that person that was responsible for the start of that
[25:31] Speaker 2: war on terror, Osama mil Laden, who was hiding in
[25:35] Speaker 2: a Bhatabad, a military garrison down a few kilometers away
[25:40] Speaker 2: from the Pakistani military academy Covit I SI unit near
[25:44] Speaker 2: a dam somewhere that is used to train personnel who
[25:48] Speaker 2: guard Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
[25:50] Speaker 1: The reason I'm talking about this.
[25:52] Speaker 2: Is there's a an article people should read if they
[25:56] Speaker 2: do not want to believe. It is an account of
[25:59] Speaker 2: the care of by the American journalist Simur Hush.
[26:04] Speaker 1: There's a lot of controversy around his account.
[26:06] Speaker 2: Many people say this is completely not right, this is
[26:09] Speaker 2: the way he accounts, But what he does is actually
[26:11] Speaker 2: basically says the US government has lied to U S
[26:14] Speaker 2: citizens about how the how is taken taken taken down.
[26:19] Speaker 2: That article link will be there in the show description
[26:21] Speaker 2: of people don't know who want to read. But the
[26:23] Speaker 2: crucial part for our discussions and deep is the role
[26:25] Speaker 2: Pakistan is said to have played in his account. One
[26:29] Speaker 2: unlike the movies You thirty, which made you believe that
[26:32] Speaker 2: there was this one courier who that CI was tracking
[26:35] Speaker 2: with like you know, high tech gadgetry and you know surveillance,
[26:38] Speaker 2: who led them toadin the information on was hand delivered
[26:43] Speaker 2: literally speaking by a rogue. Is there's a thing known
[26:46] Speaker 2: as rogue I S officer by the way, all all
[26:49] Speaker 2: rogue exactly by anyway in Pakistani context, a rogue I
[26:52] Speaker 2: S officer who walked into the US.
[26:55] Speaker 1: Rogue who walked into the U S.
[26:57] Speaker 2: And your counselate spoke to our the high top ranking
[27:01] Speaker 2: diplomats over there and said, hey, you have money, I
[27:03] Speaker 2: have information, give you money. I'll tell you is ten
[27:06] Speaker 2: million dollars is Yeah, they the ransom most twenty five
[27:09] Speaker 2: million dollars office. I think he got some and then
[27:11] Speaker 2: some of his people got some, and then his family
[27:13] Speaker 2: has flown to the US. And that's what the account goes.
[27:16] Speaker 2: And then again, unlike what people believe, the Pakistani top
[27:20] Speaker 2: military leadership, then army chief and then I say chief,
[27:24] Speaker 2: both were at some point informed about this intel that
[27:28] Speaker 2: the US had, uh, and they were threatened with money
[27:32] Speaker 2: if you do not sort of go along with us,
[27:34] Speaker 2: so we will h you know, take away all the
[27:36] Speaker 2: money that we are giving you both on both over
[27:39] Speaker 2: the table and under the table.
[27:41] Speaker 1: Fascinating account by the way. Uh.
[27:43] Speaker 2: That's somehow how the they sort of came on came
[27:46] Speaker 2: on board, and they also sort of got some more officers,
[27:49] Speaker 2: and the air defense was sort of, you know, kept
[27:51] Speaker 2: lying low when those helicopters from the US Seals, if
[27:54] Speaker 2: I'm not wrong, yeah, flew in and gotaba. Then now
[28:02] Speaker 2: the question, oh yes and DPS, this is somebody US
[28:07] Speaker 2: had spent years a decade hunting.
[28:10] Speaker 1: This is deeply personal.
[28:11] Speaker 2: This is not your routine matter of geopolitics where you
[28:14] Speaker 2: can just ignore someone doing you know, shady nonsense on
[28:16] Speaker 2: the side.
[28:17] Speaker 1: This is personal. Two thousand and three thousand people have died.
[28:20] Speaker 3: Nearly three thousand Americans, nine hundred nineteen attacks in the.
[28:24] Speaker 1: World, in the world.
[28:27] Speaker 2: How does us still end up being and sort of
[28:30] Speaker 2: you know of just like no, not even giving two
[28:33] Speaker 2: hoots about all this happens.
[28:34] Speaker 1: How does us turn blind diet or something like this?
[28:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I think it's it's because Pakistan is
[28:41] Speaker 3: a useful asset for the US and for the British,
[28:46] Speaker 3: you know, and this has been the case ever since
[28:48] Speaker 3: the very beginning. I always say this that if you
[28:51] Speaker 3: look at the declassified papers from nineteen forty six, when
[28:54] Speaker 3: the British General staff are looking at India and Pakistan,
[28:58] Speaker 3: where can we get basis looking at military thing? Right,
[29:01] Speaker 3: they have to fight a Soviet Union, they have to
[29:03] Speaker 3: fight a global war with the Soviets. Will we get
[29:06] Speaker 3: bases in India? They said, probably not. Indians are argumentative
[29:11] Speaker 3: lot they might not give us a base, but Pakistan
[29:14] Speaker 3: certainly will. So they made the right assessment back then
[29:17] Speaker 3: that Pakistan will provide the us UK with bases, with
[29:23] Speaker 3: the fueling stations, all of those things to monitor the
[29:28] Speaker 3: Soviet Union, because you know, the Soviet Union is not
[29:31] Speaker 3: very far back then, it was right up to the
[29:33] Speaker 3: borders of the Amu Dariya literally Afghanistan. Right, they made
[29:37] Speaker 3: that assessment in nineteen forty six, and from their perspective,
[29:40] Speaker 3: Pakistan is a country that has always delivered, whether it
[29:44] Speaker 3: is this outreach to China in nineteen seventy culminating in
[29:48] Speaker 3: the Nixon visit to Beijing, the frontline ally in the
[29:54] Speaker 3: war against the first War against the Soviet Union in
[29:57] Speaker 3: Afghanistan seventy nine to eighty eight, another time this global
[30:01] Speaker 3: War on Terror two thousand and one to twenty twenty one
[30:04] Speaker 3: where they are a staging ground for this, and now
[30:07] Speaker 3: twenty twenty six when they need an honorable exit out
[30:12] Speaker 3: of Iran, Pakistan is the guy next door who will deliver.
[30:15] Speaker 3: So Pakistan is a country that will do what is
[30:18] Speaker 3: in its interests. But you know, as I keep joking
[30:22] Speaker 3: that what is the one line that every Pakistani dictator
[30:25] Speaker 3: might hand over to successorve You know, countries like US,
[30:28] Speaker 3: they handover files. You know, this is the file secrets
[30:31] Speaker 3: of state. You know, you have to do this. This
[30:33] Speaker 3: is the nuclear weapons program, this is the nuclear submarine program,
[30:37] Speaker 3: these are the bombs, you know, all of those things
[30:39] Speaker 3: in Pakistan, it's I think it's just a one line thing.
[30:44] Speaker 3: One dictator hands over to the next, find out what
[30:48] Speaker 3: the United States wants and deliver on it. That's that
[30:52] Speaker 3: one line thing. Pakistan has figured that out. They always
[30:55] Speaker 3: deliver and they kind of try and cut their deal
[30:58] Speaker 3: out of this, you know, get their percentage, get their
[31:00] Speaker 3: IMF loans, get their F sixteen's, get their air to
[31:04] Speaker 3: air missiles, all those KAPANI they take out of the US.
[31:07] Speaker 1: And the US is very happy with it.
[31:09] Speaker 3: And they need a country like Pakistan to do this
[31:12] Speaker 3: dirty work for them. And you will see, you know
[31:16] Speaker 3: who is it? Qaja as If. In February, just before
[31:20] Speaker 3: the US attack on Iran, he stands up in the
[31:23] Speaker 3: Assembly in Pakistan and he says that National Assembly stands
[31:26] Speaker 3: up and he says that the US has used us
[31:29] Speaker 3: like tissue paper. Then he says, no, not tissue paper,
[31:33] Speaker 3: toilet paper. You know, it's like as specific as that.
[31:38] Speaker 3: I mean, that was February, Yeah, that was pre twenty
[31:40] Speaker 3: eight February. Now they need them the most, So I
[31:43] Speaker 3: suppose figuring out why did I have to say that?
[31:46] Speaker 1: Right? Then? You know so?
[31:48] Speaker 3: And what Pakistan does is the one line title of
[31:53] Speaker 3: my one word title of my dear friend Adrian Levy,
[31:58] Speaker 3: one of the finest writers that I know. He's written
[32:01] Speaker 3: several books, including On twenty six eleven. But there's a
[32:03] Speaker 3: book that I first read, his book called Deception when
[32:07] Speaker 3: he was in The Guardian two thousand and seven. He
[32:09] Speaker 3: wrote it with his wife, Kathy Scott Clark. It's called Deception.
[32:14] Speaker 3: It is how Pakistan managed to pull the wool over
[32:17] Speaker 3: the world's eyes while it continued to sell nuclear weapons
[32:22] Speaker 3: blueprints to Iran, North Korea, Iraq, Libya, all of these things.
[32:28] Speaker 3: So that's the Pakistani sop for you. And it's it's
[32:32] Speaker 3: not the state. It's actually the Pakistan military that it does,
[32:35] Speaker 3: which actually runs the deep state. The back military is
[32:38] Speaker 3: the deep state in Pakistan.
[32:40] Speaker 1: Right. We'll talk more about this, but after a pick break,
[32:43] Speaker 1: do you respect the T twenty battle? That's the I
[32:46] Speaker 1: think you've got. It's like saying that I think you.
[32:50] Speaker 4: Have to because there's a different skill set there's a
[32:53] Speaker 4: completely different skill set required.
[32:55] Speaker 1: Now.
[32:56] Speaker 4: One of those skill sets could be that you have
[32:59] Speaker 4: no fear of get out uh and therefore will play shots.
[33:03] Speaker 1: Why did Gavasko score.
[33:04] Speaker 4: Thirty six runs and sixty overs in that first ODI.
[33:07] Speaker 4: One of the reasons was he didn't want to get
[33:08] Speaker 4: out because that's what he'd been trained to do. I
[33:10] Speaker 4: don't want to get out today's batsman. If you're saying
[33:13] Speaker 4: they have no fear of getting out, that's because they're
[33:16] Speaker 4: playing a very different spot. And you've got to respect
[33:19] Speaker 4: a person who can play a ram shot first ball
[33:22] Speaker 4: or come in and smash someone over extra cover for
[33:24] Speaker 4: six first ball. That requires high level of skill. It's
[33:28] Speaker 4: not you know, it's not just about being fearless. I
[33:30] Speaker 4: think the word fearless is misused. I think it's about
[33:33] Speaker 4: your skill set that you've honed in practice for years.
[33:36] Speaker 4: I know Suya Kumariad, I know his coach tells me
[33:40] Speaker 4: that he spent hours and hours perfecting this ram shot,
[33:44] Speaker 4: on different types of sweep shots, on this parcy gym Khamaidan.
[33:47] Speaker 4: It doesn't come overnight, So I think let's respect it
[33:50] Speaker 4: as a different spot. There are the greats who will
[33:53] Speaker 4: transcend both forms. They are the greatest. I mean Coley
[33:58] Speaker 4: is doing it to some extent. Matthew Hayden did it.
[34:02] Speaker 4: Adam Gilchrist, Adam Gilchrist did it. I think devil Brevis
[34:06] Speaker 4: I believe will do it. Aby Devilliers did it. But
[34:10] Speaker 4: not everyone can do it. I think let's respect people
[34:13] Speaker 4: by saying these are very different spots.
[34:15] Speaker 1: So that's my that would be my argument to US.
[34:18] Speaker 1: Sanja Manchi, welcome back suddenly.
[34:26] Speaker 2: Before the break, we've talked about how the idea of
[34:30] Speaker 2: Pakistan playing host for peace talks between the US and
[34:34] Speaker 2: Iran is sort of, you know, a bit ironical historically speaking,
[34:37] Speaker 2: because of the role Pakistan played in helping Iran develop
[34:42] Speaker 2: whatever nuclear program it developed before the US bombed it
[34:45] Speaker 2: last year to obilitated, but apparently did not so again
[34:49] Speaker 2: this year again under President Trump. Anyway, how US has
[34:52] Speaker 2: been using Pakistan for its interest in the region. But
[34:55] Speaker 2: that's not really news as such or very new as such.
[34:59] Speaker 2: But you know, something that people don't often talk about,
[35:02] Speaker 2: people don't often think about or discuss, is how Pakistan
[35:06] Speaker 2: and Iran have had their relations over the years.
[35:10] Speaker 1: Because if Iran.
[35:12] Speaker 2: Agrees has agreed in this case to hold meetings in Islama,
[35:17] Speaker 2: buta to negotiate with the US for whatever he is,
[35:20] Speaker 2: that has to be okay. There is some sort of
[35:23] Speaker 2: equation between the two because of which Iran agreed to
[35:25] Speaker 2: do that.
[35:26] Speaker 1: Right.
[35:26] Speaker 2: So, while we know about the Pakistan US relationship that's
[35:30] Speaker 2: been there for several decades. Now, how I have Iran
[35:35] Speaker 2: and Pakistan been like before seventy nine, the nineteen seventy
[35:38] Speaker 2: nine Revolution of Iran? After that, yeah, and in the
[35:41] Speaker 2: years since.
[35:42] Speaker 3: Well, you know, that's a good question, Dave. And you
[35:45] Speaker 3: know the fact is that before seventy nine they were
[35:48] Speaker 3: very close. The Shower of Iran was a huge supporter
[35:50] Speaker 3: of Pakistan. He's given them arms, Simonish, loan them planes,
[35:55] Speaker 3: all of that. They're very close, right, But in seventy nine,
[35:59] Speaker 3: a rift happens because you have an Islamic theocracy iola
[36:05] Speaker 3: community taking over, and what he does is something that
[36:09] Speaker 3: frightens Pakistan. He calls for the Shias to rise in revolt.
[36:15] Speaker 1: Right.
[36:16] Speaker 3: Pakistan has a large Shia population fifteen percent, Right, it's
[36:19] Speaker 3: a very large number of people one and a half
[36:21] Speaker 3: two Shias there and they start, you know, being encouraged
[36:28] Speaker 3: instigated by Pakistan, by Iran and Ziaoul Huck's military regime
[36:34] Speaker 3: retaliates by creating these death squads literally like the Sipai
[36:40] Speaker 3: Sahaba Pakistan SSP, Lashkari Jiang VLIJ. These are all anti
[36:45] Speaker 3: Shia groups and they have been raised to basically kill Shias,
[36:50] Speaker 3: put them under control so that there's no danger of
[36:53] Speaker 3: them overthrowing the state, and you know, like like they
[36:57] Speaker 3: did in neighboring Iran. So Iran's the semi revolution frightened
[37:01] Speaker 3: everyone in the region. All Muslim countries were afraid of
[37:04] Speaker 3: what happened over there because that signified a religious movement
[37:09] Speaker 3: taking over the state. Now the only two countries, even
[37:12] Speaker 3: as of today, there are two billion Muslims world over,
[37:17] Speaker 3: but the only two Islamic theocracies. One is of course
[37:21] Speaker 3: Iran and the other is Afghanistan is where the Taliban rules,
[37:24] Speaker 3: and here it is the Islamic regime that's in power.
[37:29] Speaker 3: So this frightened a lot of people, like the Park
[37:31] Speaker 3: military and all that. But at the same time, there's
[37:34] Speaker 3: another track that's running in parallel, which is the secret
[37:40] Speaker 3: nexus between the Pakistan military and the IRGC. It's a
[37:45] Speaker 3: very interesting relationship where despite all their contradictions, we don't
[37:50] Speaker 3: like what you're doing with Shia revolution and you're destabilizing
[37:53] Speaker 3: our Shia populations. These guys make up pact and the
[37:59] Speaker 3: Park Army is reaching out to the Iranians through the IRGC,
[38:04] Speaker 3: which has got ambitions for a nuclear enrichment program, and
[38:09] Speaker 3: you buy about nineteen eighty seven you see the first
[38:13] Speaker 3: examples of this. This is all documented, this is widely documented.
[38:18] Speaker 3: Ia has got all these records, think tanks, if books
[38:22] Speaker 3: have been written on this. Where in eighty seven you
[38:25] Speaker 3: see the first linkages between the IRGC and the Pakistan Army.
[38:33] Speaker 3: You see centrifuge technology being transferred to Iran and interestingly,
[38:38] Speaker 3: how many Iola, how many the late Ethola company is
[38:41] Speaker 3: someone who's very close who actually forges this linkage between
[38:47] Speaker 3: the Iranian regime and Zia's Pakistan. Now General Zia also
[38:52] Speaker 3: he's the guy who he's the first military dictator, that
[38:56] Speaker 3: he's the third military dictator, but the first guy to
[38:58] Speaker 3: grab the nuclear weapons program, takes it over, statches it
[39:02] Speaker 3: away from Zulfibutu. And in eighty eight, even as talks
[39:08] Speaker 3: are going on with the Soviet Union for the Soviet
[39:12] Speaker 3: withdrawal from Afghanistan, Zia is already looking at her Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran,
[39:18] Speaker 3: Turkey axis of Islamic countries where Pakistan is the is
[39:27] Speaker 3: the pivot and Pakistan is the pivot because it is
[39:30] Speaker 3: the only Islamic country with the bomb. But it doesn't
[39:34] Speaker 3: say it because even in eighty seven eighty eight, the
[39:37] Speaker 3: bomb is a very closely guarded secret. Just a handful
[39:41] Speaker 3: of people in Pakistan even know about it, and they're
[39:44] Speaker 3: all in the army and probably a few scientists. Our
[39:48] Speaker 3: scientists have kind of figured are inw knew that they
[39:51] Speaker 3: had the bomb. The political leadership knew about it, but
[39:54] Speaker 3: this was something that they kept very quiet the Pakistanis
[39:57] Speaker 3: and in nineteen in the nineties, Zia dies. Of course
[40:02] Speaker 3: in eighty eight right mysteriously, his killing has never been
[40:06] Speaker 3: solved till now. It's a decapitation of sorts because with
[40:10] Speaker 3: ZR dies, not only the US ambassador in that plane
[40:13] Speaker 3: crash in Bahawalpur, but also a very very important guy,
[40:17] Speaker 3: the DGI SI at Abdul Rahman, who's literally the number
[40:24] Speaker 3: two guy. He is the dg I SI, the most
[40:26] Speaker 3: powerful DGSI Pakistan has ever had. It was ds have
[40:30] Speaker 3: almost a decade. He ran the entire Ghan war. You know,
[40:33] Speaker 3: there have been books that have been written about him,
[40:35] Speaker 3: one of the most enigmatic of ISI chiefs. He dies
[40:38] Speaker 3: in that and then who takes over from there? It's
[40:42] Speaker 3: the vice chief if you see those accounts of that
[40:45] Speaker 3: in various books where the vice chief takes off k Arrif.
[40:52] Speaker 3: And there's another person actually who benefits from this assassination
[40:57] Speaker 3: of z and that is Mirza Islam bag Leftrang General
[41:00] Speaker 3: who later becomes the army chief. Mirza Islam Beg is
[41:03] Speaker 3: the one who uh sits with the d G I
[41:07] Speaker 3: s I. What what's his name? Uh left in general
[41:12] Speaker 3: Beg no Beg. This is uh miss Islam Beg. And
[41:18] Speaker 3: the I side chief is an odious character who ran
[41:22] Speaker 3: the entire Taliban and his his name will come to me.
[41:26] Speaker 3: I'm just forgetting his name. There's so many of these
[41:28] Speaker 3: I SI chiefs.
[41:29] Speaker 1: Uh.
[41:30] Speaker 3: So these two guys are the ones who actually set
[41:33] Speaker 3: up the entire trafficking thing. And you know under their
[41:38] Speaker 3: tenure uh break and this d G I s I
[41:42] Speaker 3: Uh they start this nuclear black market, this nuclear walmart
[41:47] Speaker 3: right and uh. This d G I s I passed
[41:51] Speaker 3: away a few years ago, about a decade ago. One
[41:54] Speaker 3: of the most odious of the d G I sis uh.
[41:58] Speaker 3: He was there for just a armored core of sir.
[42:00] Speaker 3: How can I not remember his name? He was there
[42:02] Speaker 3: for just two years or so. The Americans got him out.
[42:05] Speaker 3: By the way, they began this thing of this nuclear
[42:09] Speaker 3: walmart selling Pakistani nuclear weapons technology so that they could fight,
[42:14] Speaker 3: you know, fight the so called jihad in Kashmir. That's
[42:17] Speaker 3: how the jihad thing was financed by the funded by
[42:20] Speaker 3: the sale of Pakistani nuclear weapons technology. And that is
[42:24] Speaker 3: why this is a very very big threat, the fact
[42:28] Speaker 3: that Pakistan's nuclear weapons at the same time it's bankrupt.
[42:31] Speaker 3: It will use this to earn money, and which is
[42:34] Speaker 3: what they did during the tenure of this general mids Aslambik.
[42:38] Speaker 3: He's still around, he's in his early nineties. And so
[42:43] Speaker 3: that's how this whole story began. This uh you know
[42:47] Speaker 3: nuclear black market where Aku can't actually became the front
[42:51] Speaker 3: of it, right, yeah, the fall guy. Rather, he was
[42:54] Speaker 3: a fall guy who took the entire rap. Musher have
[42:56] Speaker 3: told him in two thousand and four, listen, you take
[42:58] Speaker 3: the rap, the state is going to be severely embarrassed.
[43:01] Speaker 3: I believe this is what they told him. The they
[43:06] Speaker 3: crucified him, they put him under house arrest. He's confessed
[43:09] Speaker 3: on national television. He was pardoned by Musharaff and he
[43:13] Speaker 3: was spent the rest of his years as a uh
[43:17] Speaker 3: you know, a prisoner. He was closely got he couldn't
[43:21] Speaker 3: leave the country and all of that. So there you go.
[43:23] Speaker 3: He took the fall. He took the rap for a
[43:26] Speaker 3: very sophisticated, very well oiled campaign of nuclear you know,
[43:31] Speaker 3: black marketing.
[43:33] Speaker 2: It's crazy actually come because like you, like I said
[43:36] Speaker 2: at the beginning of this episode, like this is uh
[43:39] Speaker 2: not something that's often talked about now at least, but
[43:43] Speaker 2: it's all you just.
[43:46] Speaker 3: Hammid goal is that d G I S I was
[43:48] Speaker 3: the armored Core officer who was Mirza Islam BIG's you
[43:51] Speaker 3: know Robin. Yeah, Aslam Beeg was the Batman and this
[43:55] Speaker 3: guy was his Robin. So these two were the ones
[43:57] Speaker 3: who figured this whole thing out that is odious character.
[44:02] Speaker 1: Uh.
[44:02] Speaker 2: And now we are today where Pakistan is sort of
[44:04] Speaker 2: you know, trying to diffuse a crisis that's been sparked
[44:07] Speaker 2: by this very uh.
[44:09] Speaker 3: Martialist as firefighter.
[44:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine the game it played back then.
[44:14] Speaker 2: Uh, you know, combining everything that we've talked about on
[44:17] Speaker 2: this episode. Now, uh, today, how has it come to
[44:22] Speaker 2: that Pakistan.
[44:23] Speaker 1: Was the most obvious choice according to you?
[44:26] Speaker 3: Was it?
[44:26] Speaker 1: I think just pure chance?
[44:29] Speaker 2: Was it the fact that Iran also ended up angering
[44:32] Speaker 2: some of the other so called so called neutral states
[44:35] Speaker 2: that's Katar during the conflict, because of which they were
[44:38] Speaker 2: out of options.
[44:39] Speaker 1: Uh.
[44:40] Speaker 2: And it's just like you know, there literally is no
[44:42] Speaker 2: other option for right now except Pakistan for these two
[44:44] Speaker 2: countries to sort of hammer it out.
[44:46] Speaker 3: Yeah, So it was Tina, the Tina factor as we
[44:48] Speaker 3: call it here, t I n A. It's there is
[44:51] Speaker 3: no alternative but to Pakistan. The alternatives were all Iran
[44:56] Speaker 3: had bombed all the alternatives, Like you said, kata Omar
[44:59] Speaker 3: Oman was playing a role, and then they kind of
[45:02] Speaker 3: they got born once, I guess. But all the countries
[45:04] Speaker 3: were right, so you obviously had to look out of
[45:07] Speaker 3: the GCC thing belt. So they possibly the three countries
[45:11] Speaker 3: that came to mind is Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan. Now,
[45:16] Speaker 3: which one of these three is most acceptable to the
[45:20] Speaker 3: United States? His favorite field Marshal Field, favorite field Marshal.
[45:23] Speaker 3: He's calling him favorite field Marshal for a reason. He says,
[45:26] Speaker 3: you better deliver yes, if you don't deliver, you're not
[45:29] Speaker 3: going to be my favorite field marshal, and then uh,
[45:32] Speaker 3: the stick will follow, you know. So that's what They've got.
[45:35] Speaker 3: A client state that is so bigholden to the US,
[45:39] Speaker 3: that's so dependent on the US, and so it suits
[45:43] Speaker 3: the US to have a compliant, cliant Pakistan with a
[45:48] Speaker 3: favorite field marshal in charge. It's a you know, it
[45:52] Speaker 3: is a vestigial democracy almost. It's a it has a
[45:55] Speaker 3: facade of a democracy, but it's this you know, uh
[45:58] Speaker 3: two system approach where military runs everything and you have
[46:02] Speaker 3: a civilian facade. So it was the eminent thing candidate
[46:07] Speaker 3: for this kind of role.
[46:09] Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
[46:11] Speaker 2: We've talked about the incentives behind Pakistan wanting to play
[46:15] Speaker 2: a host in this situation, and some of it is
[46:18] Speaker 2: purely purely financial, most of it.
[46:23] Speaker 1: What about the responsibilities? Not two things here.
[46:25] Speaker 2: One is the controversy that happened after the first first
[46:30] Speaker 2: not sorry, first not was it the first round of talks? No,
[46:33] Speaker 2: not of the first roundhop talks. The first season announcement
[46:36] Speaker 2: made by Donald Trump before the first round of talk
[46:38] Speaker 2: talks that happened last last weekend. So that ceasefire was
[46:43] Speaker 2: sort of broken by Pakistan were basically Pakistan und a
[46:46] Speaker 2: message to both of them, run and the US that
[46:48] Speaker 2: you know, g stop fighting and we'll meet you guys
[46:51] Speaker 2: will meet at our hotel in the next few days
[46:53] Speaker 2: and you can then.
[46:54] Speaker 1: Start a piece process.
[46:56] Speaker 2: What happened was there was some what US has on
[47:00] Speaker 2: record said, miscommunication. I think it was Marco Rubio who
[47:05] Speaker 2: said it, or it was JD. Vans one of those
[47:07] Speaker 2: two who.
[47:08] Speaker 1: Basically said that.
[47:09] Speaker 2: So what happened after that announcement was Israel kept bombing Lebanon,
[47:14] Speaker 2: saying that Lebanon is not part of the seas fare agreement.
[47:17] Speaker 2: Iran said insisted that no, Lebanon is part of the
[47:20] Speaker 2: seas agreement. The US said, you know, Lebanon is not
[47:23] Speaker 2: part of the seas FA agreement. The Pakistani PMS handle,
[47:27] Speaker 2: which put out the original statement on this ceasefire, said
[47:30] Speaker 2: that Lebanon is part of the part of the agreement. Later,
[47:36] Speaker 2: I think, like I said, it was either Mark Rubio
[47:38] Speaker 2: or JD. Vans who said the Iranians genuinely thought Lebanin
[47:42] Speaker 2: was part of the season fare agreements, basically indicating there
[47:45] Speaker 2: was some communication gap somewhere. Many people have actually blamed
[47:48] Speaker 2: Pakistan for it.
[47:50] Speaker 1: Was their mistake.
[47:51] Speaker 2: They perhaps ended up telling Iranians that that's part of
[47:53] Speaker 2: the agreement, telling Usk okay, that's not part of the agreement,
[47:56] Speaker 2: and never made making those two points meet. The reason
[48:00] Speaker 2: for my long winded sort of you know question, oh year,
[48:04] Speaker 2: is I want to understand when a country like Pakistan
[48:06] Speaker 2: or any other country plays host to peace negotiations like these,
[48:11] Speaker 2: what are obviously, because this is something in the UN
[48:14] Speaker 2: Charter anyway, un charters don't apply in the world, But
[48:18] Speaker 2: so what are those responsibilities for that post country and
[48:22] Speaker 2: very important gain by extension?
[48:24] Speaker 1: What are the risks?
[48:25] Speaker 3: Well, see, they're the thing is that you're dealing with
[48:28] Speaker 3: two countries who have not had diplomatic relations since nineteen
[48:31] Speaker 3: seventy nine, right forty seven years. They're being cut teque,
[48:36] Speaker 3: not talking to each other. So when you don't have talk,
[48:41] Speaker 3: so you don't have even face to face talks literally
[48:44] Speaker 3: and in this case, what the Pakistanis would be doing
[48:47] Speaker 3: is to ferry messages from one room to the other.
[48:51] Speaker 3: That's essentially what they've been doing even through the Islambard things.
[48:54] Speaker 3: I don't believe the two sides actually came face to
[48:57] Speaker 3: face to face and they were not sitting across the
[48:59] Speaker 3: table and they were not talking to each other. So
[49:02] Speaker 3: it's just that they first make an offer, it goes.
[49:06] Speaker 3: They take their offer to that the side and said no, no,
[49:08] Speaker 3: this doesn't work, they go back. So it's just literally
[49:11] Speaker 3: a back and forth of things. Now a thing like
[49:16] Speaker 3: this peace talks of this nature, which are so volatile.
[49:21] Speaker 3: I mean I've literally called it negotiating in a mindfield.
[49:26] Speaker 1: Right.
[49:27] Speaker 3: It's not a normal ground that you're on because one
[49:29] Speaker 3: false move, bang, and ceasefire is over. And that's exactly
[49:32] Speaker 3: what's happened here. The first round collapsed because unrealistic you know, expectations.
[49:40] Speaker 3: And the other thing is here, you're looking at someone
[49:42] Speaker 3: who wants instant results. He wants instant coffee out of stuff,
[49:47] Speaker 3: which has taken the US months to you know, achieve
[49:52] Speaker 3: and you've been looking. If you look at the history
[49:54] Speaker 3: of the JCPOA during the Obama administration, which I think
[49:58] Speaker 3: they got it in the twenty tens orly fourteen fifteen
[50:01] Speaker 3: or so. This came through after months of negotiations and
[50:06] Speaker 3: literally weeks on ground. Then Switzerland, I think they came
[50:09] Speaker 3: looking at a two week negotiation which went on for
[50:12] Speaker 3: five six weeks. They were literally there doing that back
[50:14] Speaker 3: and forth for several weeks before they could finally agree.
[50:18] Speaker 3: And then the Iranians said, okay, fine, we halt our
[50:21] Speaker 3: enrichment in return for concessions. Now you're expecting similar results
[50:27] Speaker 3: here in hours, and it's not going to happen because
[50:31] Speaker 3: the Iranians are masters of the long game. They don't
[50:35] Speaker 3: look at things in the tenure of one US president
[50:40] Speaker 3: or even the tenure of two US presidents. They're looking
[50:42] Speaker 3: at it ten years, twenty years, forty years. They're very patient.
[50:47] Speaker 3: They've been around for five thousand years. You have to
[50:50] Speaker 3: give them some element of patients. So that is one
[50:53] Speaker 3: of the reasons. And so when you negotiate, when you
[50:58] Speaker 3: and you're the middleman, when you're the interlocutor in these
[51:04] Speaker 3: kind of talks, you have to be prepared to take
[51:05] Speaker 3: the risks of there are the optics, Oh they have
[51:10] Speaker 3: you know, the US and Iran have landed here and
[51:13] Speaker 3: they're talking islam Abad is now the center of the world,
[51:16] Speaker 3: which is the new Kuta, and you know all of that.
[51:18] Speaker 3: The flip side is they might not even show up,
[51:21] Speaker 3: as has happened in the second round. Right, So what
[51:24] Speaker 3: exactly happened. Did the Pakistanis literally convey a wrong message
[51:29] Speaker 3: to both sides? Did they tell the US something else?
[51:33] Speaker 3: Did they tell the Iranian something else? Because they were
[51:35] Speaker 3: so anxious. Muni was really anxious for a deal, because
[51:39] Speaker 3: he landed up in Tehran three year last week he
[51:44] Speaker 3: flew down.
[51:45] Speaker 1: He was there for three days.
[51:46] Speaker 3: He was, you know, speaking to them literally convincing them,
[51:51] Speaker 3: pleading possibly come and you know, get a deal with
[51:54] Speaker 3: the US. And then suddenly over the weekend you see
[51:57] Speaker 3: this interesting report in Fox News. They say that Muni
[52:01] Speaker 3: has ties with IRGC. He's an honest guy. So there
[52:05] Speaker 3: was a lot of sense of frustration. I think both
[52:10] Speaker 3: sides are running out of time. But the Iranians believe
[52:13] Speaker 3: that they have more time than Trump US, and that's
[52:16] Speaker 3: why they've decided to play the waiting game. They're saying, look,
[52:19] Speaker 3: we can't be you can't negotiate it with us with
[52:23] Speaker 3: putting a gun to our head. You can't you know,
[52:26] Speaker 3: blockade the Strait of Hormos, not allow our ships to
[52:29] Speaker 3: go out or in, and then say no, now you
[52:32] Speaker 3: have to negotiate that that's unacceptable to us. Then they
[52:34] Speaker 3: captured in an Iranian ship and Iranian flagged ship Tosca
[52:39] Speaker 3: and vy Tosca that they haven't taken kindly to and
[52:42] Speaker 3: they've called out the Americans for that. So it's a
[52:44] Speaker 3: very you know, bizarre kind of a situation because they've
[52:48] Speaker 3: not won the war. Let's not forget the US has
[52:50] Speaker 3: made several claims that we have destroyed the Navy, destroyed
[52:54] Speaker 3: the air force, we bombed them fifteen thousand, blah blah blah,
[52:56] Speaker 3: all of that. Iran is not defeated, that a gym
[52:59] Speaker 3: is still in place, Father has given a son has
[53:02] Speaker 3: taken over from father. Right continues, So if you have
[53:06] Speaker 3: not defeated the country, then how can you make these
[53:09] Speaker 3: kind of maximalist claims out of them? So then you
[53:13] Speaker 3: can if you've not defeated them, then you can't make
[53:16] Speaker 3: it maximalists claim. Then you will come to a middle
[53:18] Speaker 3: ground that is okay. Like I was saying, maybe not
[53:22] Speaker 3: twenty years, five years or ten years the access of evil.
[53:27] Speaker 1: I won't fund them for.
[53:28] Speaker 3: Maybe five years, So you know, those kinds of things,
[53:30] Speaker 3: you can't work out a middle path. But that middle
[53:32] Speaker 3: path also takes time. It is not going to happen
[53:35] Speaker 3: in a couple of hours. It's certainly not going to
[53:38] Speaker 3: happen in a social media cycle. And the Iran is
[53:43] Speaker 3: a constantly telling you, you know, I'm not a huge
[53:46] Speaker 3: fan of the run in regime, but you have to
[53:48] Speaker 3: see them the way they're they're patient, they're very good negotiators,
[53:52] Speaker 3: and they're telling them, look, do not conduct negotiations and
[53:54] Speaker 3: social media. Let's do it behind closed doors. So they
[53:57] Speaker 3: don't believe the US is very honest about this. They
[54:00] Speaker 3: think that Trump just wants something and a win, and
[54:04] Speaker 3: you know he wants to pronounce that thing. And you
[54:06] Speaker 3: see the kind of multiple messaging that's been coming out
[54:09] Speaker 3: of the US that they have agreed to this.
[54:11] Speaker 1: No, theyve agree to that.
[54:12] Speaker 3: They agreed to allowing us acraft to land on the
[54:15] Speaker 3: soil and take away their gold or whatever their uranium does.
[54:20] Speaker 3: I mean, it is bizarre. So it is stupid war,
[54:24] Speaker 3: stupid piece, bizarre negotiations. That's the only way to put
[54:29] Speaker 3: it true.
[54:29] Speaker 2: I think I don't think there's a better way to
[54:32] Speaker 2: end this episode, honestly, So I think we'll do that
[54:34] Speaker 2: there and see what happens, because, like you said, time is.
[54:39] Speaker 1: Running out, or maybe more overcame.
[54:41] Speaker 2: But also I ran, by the way, something you refer
[54:43] Speaker 2: to very briefly on this episode, but something that people
[54:45] Speaker 2: are sort of missing, but something that was part of
[54:48] Speaker 2: our discussion on the meeting to dec meeting, which is
[54:51] Speaker 2: why I thought of that, is people forget that oil
[54:54] Speaker 2: production is or something can turn on and off, yes,
[54:57] Speaker 2: very easily. So the longer this blocke it continues, the closer.
[55:00] Speaker 2: In fact, reports are that it Ran is reaching its
[55:03] Speaker 2: maximum capacity for storing all the oil. So once that happens,
[55:07] Speaker 2: the infrastructure it has will be at risk because it
[55:10] Speaker 2: can't just turn production of it. And as far as Trump,
[55:14] Speaker 2: like you know, again we've discussed in previous episodes, he
[55:16] Speaker 2: has that big meeting with China coming.
[55:18] Speaker 3: Up fourth of July, and then of course the election,
[55:21] Speaker 3: the election, and then yeah, so okay, there's a big
[55:24] Speaker 3: independency celebration, then the meeting with Jenping, and then the
[55:27] Speaker 3: big election.
[55:28] Speaker 1: So time is running out. So what happened, I don't know.
[55:31] Speaker 1: Still one knows, one man knows, one man knows. Maybe
[55:34] Speaker 1: even he doesn't like he likes to say, even I
[55:36] Speaker 1: don't know what I'm thinking. It depends on the time of.
[55:40] Speaker 2: Right, So great, I think we'll let it that great
[55:43] Speaker 2: chats and deep as always.
[55:44] Speaker 1: Thank you so much, thanks for having me there and.
[55:46] Speaker 2: Thanks is always while listen viewers. That's it for this fix.
[55:48] Speaker 2: Defense toes for more, tune in next week. Till then,
[55:50] Speaker 2: stay safe and not to any boundaries with our passport, yes,

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