Israel, in conjunction with the US, has been engaged in a war against Iran with multiple objectives, including regime change but also including the destruction of its ability to develop nuclear bombs. The reason is simple. Israel, despite having superiority in conventional arms against all its neighbours, and despite having won all its wars against its Arab neighbours, lives in dread of being annihilated by a nuclear strike.
For that very reason, it attacked and obliterated Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, located just 18 miles south of Baghdad in 1981. The French had built the reactor. The order to attack was given by Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the attack was carried out by US-supplied F-15s and F-16s. Baghdad is located some 1,000 km from Tel Aviv.
Today, none of the Arab countries have nuclear assets, nor does Türkiye. However, Pakistan has them, as does India.
When New Delhi tested its first atomic bomb in 1974, Islamabad stepped up its own efforts. Pakistan’s prime minister at that time, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was a master rhetorician. He warned, in no uncertain terms, that “we will eat leaves and grass, even go hungry” to build Pakistan’s nuclear capability. “There’s a Hindu bomb, a Jewish bomb and a Christian bomb,” he wrote. “There must be an Islamic bomb.” That label, an Islamic Bomb, raised eyebrows around the world, especially in Tel Aviv.
In the early 1990s, I attended a briefing on Pakistan’s nuclear assets by a well known professor and prolific author from Pakistan, Hasan Askari-Rizvi, at Stanford University. He laid out the defensive nature of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. The first question that was put to him was whether Pakistan would at some point be able to hit Israel with nuclear bombs. He said, no, Pakistan had no intentions of hitting Israel. Unfortunately, the concern that the Jewish state would one day be obliterated by an Islamic Bomb has lingered on for decades.
The information on the precise number of nuclear weapons in the inventory of two warring siblings is highly classified. However, from sources such as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Centre for Arms Control and Proliferation, and Statista one can infer the number of nuclear weapons in the inventory of Pakistan, India and Israel.
Pakistan is estimated to possess approximately 170 nuclear warheads, making it the sixth largest stockpile in the world. It employs a “triad” of delivery vehicles, including road-mobile ballistic missiles (such as the Shaheen-2, Ghauri, and Nasr), and F-16 fighter aircraft. It is also believed to be developing sea-based cruise missiles. The arsenal is targeted against arch-rival India. It has short-to-medium-range capability, largely designed to counter conventional military disadvantages against India. It is unlikely that these nuclear weapons can reach Israel, which is located some 3,500 km away from the nearest location in Pakistan, such as Gwadar, Balochistan.
India is estimated to possess approximately 180 nuclear warheads. Its arsenal is growing, with India actively modernising its delivery systems, including land-based missiles (Agni series), sea-based (Arihant-class submarines), and aircraft (Mirage 2000, Rafale) to maintain a nuclear triad. It is developing new missiles like the Agni-V, with ranges spanning 7,000 to 8,000 km.
As for Israel, it has not declared that it has nuclear weapons, but its first deliverable nuclear weapon is estimated to have been completed in late 1966 or early 1967. Today, it is widely believed to have a nuclear inventory of 90 to 400 warheads. It is also believed to possess a nuclear triad of delivery options by air, land, and sea.
Israel's nuclear weapons delivery systems are estimated to include between 25 and 100 of the Jericho series of medium to intercontinental range ballistic missiles, five Dolphin-class submarines, with a total of 20 launch tubes for the Popeye Turbo submarine-launched cruise missile, and one squadron each of F-15 and F-16 fighters. Israel is also believed to have developed neutron bomb warheads and nuclear artillery rounds.
Recent diplomatic engagements between Indian and Israeli leadership have sparked geopolitical theories suggesting the two nations might collaborate against Pakistan's nuclear assets
While Pakistan is currently on the Board of Peace for Gaza sponsored by the US, and while it enjoys a cordial relationship with the US, its population is strongly on Iran’s side during the current war and has never been on Israel’s side. According to a poll conducted in 2023 by Gallup Pakistan, 91% of Pakistanis are supportive of the Palestinians of Gaza, while only 2% report are supportive of Israel. The percentages have probably tilted even more toward the Palestinian since the Israeli campaign began in Gaza. Indeed, much of the world remains alienated by Israel’s indiscriminate military operation in Gaza and the continued violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank
Israel has a close relationship with India, which was demonstrated yet again when the Indian Prime Minister Modi visited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on 25-26 February, just two days before Israel and the US attacked Iran. Of course, Pakistan and India both possess nuclear assets, and this was demonstrated in May 1998 when India exploded five bombs and Pakistan followed with six bombs.
Capitalising on its relationship with India, Julian has proffered the hypothesis that in conjunction with India, Israel may launch a strike against Pakistan to take out its nuclear assets. What are the odds of that happening?
Here’s Ahmad’s viewpoint. Pakistan has for long modelled a variety of scenarios of an Indian attack on its nuclear facilities. It also knows where India’s assets are located. In May of last year, there was an aerial conflict between the countries and there is substantial evidence that Pakistan came out ahead in that conflict. This is largely due to the superiority of the Pakistan Air Force over its Indian counterpart.
It is hard to imagine that two nuclear-armed nations would attack each other. Since August 1945, when the US hit two Japanese cities with atomic bombs, the US had not used nuclear weapons against any nation. It did not use them in the Vietnam War, nor the Afghan War, nor the Iraq War.
It is difficult to imagine a nuclear war breaking out between two nations that are armed with nuclear weapons. In the literature, this is called the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine.
Any Indian attack on Pakistan will guarantee a Pakistani nuclear attack on India. Why would India take this risk, especially on behalf of Israel? An additional complication is that India would have to contend with the fact that Pakistan has recently signed a defence pact with the Saudis, which states that an attack on either country by a third country will be considered an attack on the other country, and invite retaliation.
India also has very close business ties with Saudi Arabia and would be unwilling to risk losing them. Trade between the two nations is valued at over $42 billion. Saudi Arabia is India's 5th largest trading partner and has invested billions in India. Nearly 3 million Indian expats work in Saudi Arabia. Why would India risk losing all these benefits by attacking Pakistan?
Julian has a far more pessimistic view. He cites an ominous statement from the director of geopolitics at Hebrew University, Meir Masri, which identifies Pakistan as the next target of Israel’s de-nuclearisation campaign.
Israeli foreign policy has consistently sought to convince their supplier states to provide not only arms, but also to collaborate in the use of military force in the Middle East on behalf of Tel Aviv. While France’s domestic political pendulum swung to the left after the Second World War, a series of governments in Paris not only provided Tel Aviv with tanks and aircraft, but also the infrastructure at Dimona to facilitate the development of nuclear weapons. Manipulating France into believing that charismatic Egyptian President Gamel Abdul Nasser was the vital inspiration and arms supplier for the Algerian resistance to French occupation, Israel was able to convince France to get Great Britain to engage in a joint invasion of Egypt in 1956. During the conflict French aircraft provided air defence over Israel.
As France was souring on its relations with Israel in the 1960s, Germany stepped in to provide arms as reparations for the use of forced Jewish labour during the Holocaust. Again, relying on domestic political agitation by Zionists, Tel Aviv was able to pressure Washington in the lead-up to the 1967 Arab Israeli War, often called the Six Day War, not to interfere with its expected seizure of land. It was the US President Lyndon Johnson’s promise to Israel, rather than any pre-emptive strategy, that determined the timing of Israel’s attack. When Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria in October of 1973, in what came to be known as the Ramadan or Yom Kippur War, the US and Soviet navies almost came to blows as they were resupplying their respective allies. Israel benefited from the Camp David Accords with Egypt, which neutralised Egypt as a military threat at the US taxpayer’s expense of US$1.3bn per annum since.
In 1982, Israel once again applied pressure on Washington, and the latter deployed US Marines into Lebanon. Sadly, 241 Marines were blown up in a suicide bombing executed in retaliation for US naval bombardment of Syrian forces confronting Israel.
Through the 1980s, Israeli pressure on the US, including references to Pakistan developing an “Islamic Bomb,” were rejected by US President Ronald Reagan who relied on Pakistan’s beneficence in supplying the Mujahideen resistance to Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. The White House repeatedly provided certification to the US Congress that Pakistan was not developing a nuclear capability.
Starting in 1981 with the Israeli strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, Tel Aviv kept pressure on Washington to respond, largely without success as Iraq was pivotal to the US in its continued policy to contain revolutionary Iran. Zionist supporters pushed for strong measures in dealing with Iraq in the 1990s until 2003, not because it was believed Saddam Hussein had an existing nuclear weapons program in Tel Aviv, but because Israel was concerned that Iraq would always pose a nuclear threat unless it was invaded, its strong bureaucracy dismantled, and it was territorially dismembered.
Israel shifted its rhetoric for denuclearisation of Iran shortly after the Iraq War of 2003. Tel Aviv began by scuttling attempts at normalisation of relations between Tehran and Washington. It pushed hard on the US leadership to sanction Iran, then to launch the Twelve Days War in June 2025 and finally to launch a joint Israeli-US attack on Iran on 28 February 2026.
Shortly after the end of the Twelve Day War of 2025, Israeli academics and politicians began speculating about the next target, with most attention falling on Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Given Washington’s dependence on Turkey’s regional diplomacy, and the latter’s access to nuclear deterrence as a NATO member, Pakistan is the next most likely candidate for a systematic policy of US-led sanctions. With Israeli Indian rapprochement, and Sino-Russian cooperation, Pakistan is becoming increasingly identified by Israelis as an obstacle to the full neutralisation of the Middle East. Already Pakistan has been confronted by the US on the range of its nuclear-capable missiles to ensure they could not reach Israel, to which Islamabad has submitted.
This is likely to manifest itself as an Israeli and Indian intelligence effort coupled with a media campaign in Western capitals, which is in turn used to pressure Washington to impose escalating sanctions. The typical modus operandi against Pakistan is to leverage the irrational Western fear of militant Islamic fundamentalism coupled with claims of Islamabad’s political instability, to justify a raid against its nuclear facilities.
Pakistan’s best diplomatic strategy to stave off any US-Israeli effort at isolating it, is to seek closer relations with Europe and democratic East Asia, and to reconfirm its security understanding with Beijing. Pakistan may need to consider dispersal of its nuclear assets to avoid providing the US a tempting target for the type of B-2 raid inflicted during the Twelve Day War. Paradoxically, threatening Pakistan is precisely counter-productive in the way that it incentivises increased missile ranges, nuclear warhead production, development of a miniaturised thermonuclear capability, and development of fractional orbital bombardment technology.
There is no question that Pakistan is in Israel’s crosshairs and has been in India’s crosshairs for a long time. The risk of a nuclear attack, while low in Ahmad’s view, cannot be ruled out.