Tracking Pakistan’s nukes to Saudi Arabia? Several articles in one post

http://www.1913intel.com/
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Tracking Pakistan’s nukes to Saudi Arabia?
Posted by Matt on July 11, 2013 Comments Off

Pakistan may have transferred nuclear weapons to the chief bankroller of its development program, Saudi Arabia, as far back as 2004, according to a then-U.S. government official who received the revelation in a Pakistani intelligence briefing at the time, says a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Larry Werline, in a little-noticed report in Blackwater Tactical Weekly last June, said the transfer was revealed in a briefing that Pakistani Inter-Service Directorate, or ISI, officials gave him and other U.S. experts when relations between the United States and Pakistan were on a far better political and diplomatic footing.

Werline said that it was unusual that the intelligence service would oversee Pakistan’s nuclear program. Nonetheless, the high-ranking ISI briefers told of the increasing cooperation Pakistan was receiving at the time from China.

Chinese assistance included advanced production of lighter plutonium warheads for miniaturization to fit on Chinese missiles, based on technology, Werline said, that was stolen from U.S. and British work.

Essentially, the result of such work is weapons, with plutonium, that are lighter and have a higher explosive yield than weapons based on enriched uranium.

[Published: 12/08/2012 at 8:05 PM]

Tracking Pakistan’s nukes to Saudi Arabia?

PressTV – Saudi Arabia mulls buying nuclear weapons from Pakistan: Report

A report has unveiled that Saudi officials are trying to strike “a secret deal” with Pakistan to buy nuclear weapons from the Asian country.

Citing the recent meeting between King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in Jeddah, United Press International (UPI) said that “these events heightened speculation Riyadh is trying to strike a secret deal with Islamabad to acquire nuclear weapons.”

The meeting came as Riyadh has started sending its special forces to Pakistan for military training.

PressTV – Saudi Arabia mulls buying nuclear weapons from Pakistan: Report

Pakistan Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Weapons Arsenal

Pakistan is spending about $2.5 billion annually to develop nuclear weapons, according to a report the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a Swiss-based NGO affiliated with the United Nations.“Pakistan has been rapidly developing and expanding its nuclear arsenal, increasing its capacity to produce plutonium and testing and deploying a diverse array of nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles,” said the report entitled “Assuring Destruction Forever: Nuclear Modernization Around the World.”Pakistan is believed to already possess between 90 and 110 nuclear warheads, while its principal rival, India, reportedly has between 80 and 100.“Pakistan is moving from an arsenal based wholly on HEU [highly enriched uranium] to greater reliance on lighter and more compact plutonium-based weapons, which is made possible by a rapid expansion in plutonium-production capacity,” the report adds.“Pakistan is also moving from aircraft-delivered nuclear bombs to nuclear-armed ballistic and cruise missiles and from liquid-fueled to solid-fueled medium-range missile. Pakistan also has a growing nuclear weapons research, development and production infrastructure.”The report suggests that Pakistan’s drive to accelerate its atomic arsenal is likely motivated by the United States seeking to deepen defense ties with India in order to counteract the growing military might of China.“This may tie the future of Pakistan and India’s nuclear weapons to the emerging contest between the United States and China,” the report indicated.The study estimates that Pakistan may currently boast a stockpile of 2,750 kg of weapon-grade HEU and may be producing about 150 kg of HEU per year.Pakistan’s intense focus on sophisticated military weapons has come at a great cost to the lives of millions of its impoverished people who cannot meet basic daily needs, the report commented.In an editorial in India’s Hindu newspaper, Praveen Swami noted that Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions were an obsession of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto more than 40 years ago. Even while languishing in his jail cell prior to his execution in the late 1970s, the deposed PM wrote: “the Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this [nuclear] capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization is without it.”Swami said he believes Pakistan suffers from deep “existential anxieties” and that the “existence of a strategic paranoia at the heart of the Pakistan military’s thinking — a pathology that will, if unaddressed, have huge consequences for India.”A report in Pakistan Kakhudahafiz, an alternative Pakistani newspaper, suggests Islamabad’s key ally, Saudi Arabia, has played an influential role in its path toward nuclear weaponry.

Pakistan Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Weapons Arsenal

Graphic: Saudi Arabia’s missile base ‘with launch pads aimed at Israel and Iran’ – Telegraph
Posted by Matt on July 11, 2013 Comments Off

Graphic: Saudi Arabia has built a new missile base with launch pads aimed at both Israel and Iran, satellite photographs shown to The Telegraph have suggested.

Military experts at IHS Jane’s Intelligence Review made the discovery while studying images of a base in desert south-west of Riyadh that housed medium-range ballistic missiles. A pair of launch pads could be seen with launch markings apparently pointing north-west towards Tel Aviv and north-east towards Tehran.

The configuration of the launch pads, believed to have been built within the last five years, suggests that Saudi Arabia could perceive both countries as potential threats.

Graphic: Saudi Arabia’s missile base ‘with launch pads aimed at Israel and Iran’ – Telegraph