CHINA, PAK ENABLE NUCLEAR AMBITIONS OF IRAN, N. KOREA

Pakistan's nuclear journey has morphed into a template for proliferation.

- KHEDROOB THONDUP

In the shifting tectonics of global security, few threats loom larger than the clandestine spread of nuclear weapons.

While the world's attention often fixates on the overt provocations of Iran and North Korea, the deeper story lies in the quiet complicity of their enablers-China and Pakistan-whose strategic calculus and historical entanglements have helped shape the nuclear trajectories of these rogue states.

Pakistan's nuclear journey, born out of its rivalry with India, has morphed into a template for proliferation. The infamous A.Q. Khan network, which trafficked nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, was not a rogue operation in isolation-it thrived under the protective shadow of Pakistan's military-intelligence complex. Khan's centrifuge designs and uranium enrichment know-how became the backbone of Iran's early nuclear efforts and North Korea's uraniumbased program.