Why Pakistan's nuclear past casts a shadow over US-Saudi Arabia deal

The US and Saudi Arabia just agreed to a landmark nuclear agreement. India must anticipate the possibility of a similar deal with Pakistan in the not-too-distant future.

In Short

• Bush rejected Islamabad’s request after citing India and Pakistan’s different histories
• US evidence tied AQ Khan to trafficking with Iran, Libya, North Korea
• Libya’s surrendered bomb blueprints deepened doubts over claims Khan acted alone

Two decades ago, President George W Bush stood at a joint news conference with President Pervez Musharraf on the grounds of the presidential palace, the Aiwan-e-Sadar, in Islamabad. Ducks splashed in a flower-filled pool on the lawns and giant US and Pakistani flags hung vertically behind the dais. The US president was on his way back from a state visit to New Delhi. The high point of Bush's visit was a landmark Indo-US civil nuclear deal that allowed India to buy uranium and nuclear reactors for its civilian nuclear program. Bush was asked whether Pakistan could get a similar nuclear deal.

"Both countries have different histories," he said. "As we proceed further, our strategy will take into effect those well-known differences". There was a reason Bush firmly slammed the door on Musharraf standing next to him.

AQ KHAN'S SECRET NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION

Two years earlier, the Bush administration had submitted to Musharraf incriminating evidence about a Pakistani nuclear scientist running the biggest nuclear proliferation network in history.

Dr AQ Khan had sold nuclear materials, bomb designs and centrifuges to Libya, North Korea and Iran. Khan was a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, the legendary American missionary nurseryman who planted apple orchards in the 19th-century American frontier. Khan sold uranium enrichment centrifuges to Iran in the 1980s, which Iran reverse-engineered (which the US is now trying to destroy with airstrikes).

North Korea tested its first nuclear bomb just seven months after the Bush-Musharraf press conference. Only Libya voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003 — which is when IAEA investigators uncovered the Khan network. The nuclear blueprints Muammar Gaddafi had surrendered were for a Chinese nuclear bomb, the CHIC-4. The drawings were wrapped in shopping bags for Good Looks Tailors, Islamabad, where the nattily dressed Khan got his suits stitched.

The Pakistani establishment maintains to date that Khan, who passed away under house arrest in 2021, was a rogue individual acting on his own. This, interestingly, is the same doublespeak Islamabad has used for years to justify terrorists operating on its soil. The facts strain credibility. Khan took centrifuges and nuclear material from a heavily surveilled military-run nuclear program. He used the resources of the state, including Pakistani Air Force transport aircraft, to ship nuclear material to the three countries thousands of miles apart.

SAUDI ARABIA SECURES NUCLEAR DEAL WITH US

Despite Pakistan's protestations, the perfidious shadow of AQ Khan looms over all its nuclear activities. It is unlikely to get a peaceful nuclear cooperation deal of the kind Saudi Arabia signed with the United States on July 22 for now. The deal allows Saudi Arabia to enrich its own nuclear fuel without the international oversight that would prevent it from converting the know-how into weapons-grade uranium. Saudi Arabia has publicly stated its intent to get a nuclear weapon.

"Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Al Jazeera in 2018.

Saudi Arabia can become a nuclear weapon state only with Pakistani assistance. In September 2025, as war clouds loomed over West Asia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a mutual defence pact.

Following this agreement, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said Pakistan's nuclear program would be "made available to Saudi Arabia if required". Asif retracted his statement within 24 hours, evidently under international pressure, but his statement was directed at Israel.

Pakistan is currently the only Islamic country with a nuclear weapon and missiles with the range to directly target Tel Aviv, though such a course of action would invite catastrophic nuclear retaliation from Israel. The mutual defence pact gives Pakistan strategic depth within the most important Arab country, protecting it from military retaliation from India.

WEANING SAUDI FROM CHINA'S ORBIT

Saudi Arabia is also the focus of the Trump administration.

Bush's 2008 nuclear deal for India was to get a strategic partner against a rising China. Trump's 2026 nuclear deal weans Saudi Arabia away from Beijing's orbit. A quid pro quo could also be Saudi Arabian recognition of Israel under the Abraham Accords. The flip side of the agreement is that Trump just gave a nuclear deal to a country that has long said it wants a bomb, and has a strategic partnership with a near-bankrupt nuclear-armed Islamic country with a proven history of trafficking nuclear material.

A Saudi nuclear deal is problematic because of its enrichment provision. Critics of the deal like US Senator Ed Markey argue that "allowing enrichment (rather than just reactors) blurs the line between a civilian program and a potential weapons pathway".

Join the dots, and you get a recipe for disaster, in the not too distant future. Saudi Arabia going nuclear with Pakistani assistance — obtaining weapons technology or assistance from Islamabad — could add a nuclear dimension to West Asian conflicts.

A civil nuclear deal does not seem to be a current priority for Pakistan's de facto ruler, Field Marshal Asim Munir. The army chief is more intent on playing peacemaker between the US and Iran, a role for which he is believed to have sought a $10 billion bailout package from the US.

New Delhi must anticipate the possibility of a civil nuclear deal for Pakistan in the not too distant future. Any such nuclear deal would work towards Islamabad's advantage.

It would allow Pakistan to divert more of its domestically mined uranium towards building bombs and, more importantly, confer legitimacy to its nuclear weapons program and bring strategic parity with India. For the US, it would serve two interests — drag Islamabad out of China's embrace, and reinforce it against a rising India. This could be a US geopolitical hedge against the world's second and third largest economies by the mid-21st century.

- Ends