Free The Last Israelis - an Apocalyptic, Military Thriller about an Israeli Submarine and a Nuclear Iran by Noah Beck Page A

mission instructions: sail a course towards the Strait of Hormuz via the Suez Canal and replace the position of the damaged Leviathan. Ensure top readiness with weapons systems. Note that we have already made all necessary payments to the Suez Canal Authority, including all penalties for failing to give them proper advance notice of crossing.”
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    Daniel thought about the dramatic development of Iran now holding nuclear weapons. The captain knew from intelligence summaries and international media reports that the Islamic Republic had a long-standing nuclear relationship with Pakistan, despite the fact that Pakistan was a majority Sunni-Muslim country while Iran was a majority Shiite-Muslim state.
    Media reports in 2010 discussed documents obtained by Simon Henderson, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; the documents established that Iran’s nuclear program was aimed at developing atomic weapons and that Pakistan had been instrumental to Iran’s efforts. The top-secret details were provided by the scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani scientist regarded as the father of the country’s nuclear program, while he was under house arrest between 2005 and 2009. Pakistani authorities had arrested Khan for offering to sell nuclear knowhow to the highest bidder. Khan eventually disclosed to Pakistani intelligence a plethora of details about his sale of nuclear secrets to Iran and Libya. The summary of the Khan interrogation by Pakistan’s intelligence services said that General Mirza Aslam Beg, a former army chief of staff and one of Pakistan’s most influential figures, favored helping Iran with its nuclear ambitions.
    According to Khan’s account, Admiral Ali Shamkhani, a former senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and minister of defense from 1997 until 2005, arrived in Pakistan in the late 1980s. Khan claimed that Shamkhani, who came with an entourage of Iranian officials, offered $10 billion in exchange for ready-made atomic bombs. Pakistan apparently refused Iran’s offer but Khan later traveled to the Middle East, where he sold his services as a private nuclear consultant. Khan would go on to provide Iran with a variety of nuclear parts, blueprints for the centrifuges at its nuclear plant in Natanz, and a secret worldwide list of nuclear component suppliers.
    Khan was later painted as a rogue scientist responsible for illicit proliferation activities, but subsequent reports alleged that his activities may have been ordered and supervised by the Pakistani government and/or military. Pakistan’s President at the time, Parvez Musharraf, pardoned Khan the day after the scientist confessed on national television that he had sold nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea, and Iran.
    Beyond historical ties to Iran’s nuclear program, Pakistan had other reasons to sell its nuclear weapons to Iran. As a nearly bankrupt, quasi-failed state, Pakistan desperately needed cash. While Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the Sunni-Muslim world, was a more natural customer for Sunni Pakistan’s off-the-shelf nuclear arms, selling to Iran would quickly prompt a purchase order at least as large from Iran’s much richer neighbor and strategic rival. By selling to both sides of the Saudi-Iranian conflict, cash-strapped Pakistan could substantially boost revenues for its state coffers.
    Besides Pakistan’s economic incentive to sell atomic bombs to Iran, there were political reasons as well, relating to the South Asian country’s fast-deteriorating relations with the United States. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Pakistan became a key ally in the U.S. war on terror, receiving billions of dollars in economic and military aid – assistance that would have made a Pakistani nuclear arms sale to Iran unthinkable. By 2008, however, cracks in the alliance began to emerge. The deadly attacks by U.S. drones on Pakistani territory substantially strained bilateral relations as the U.S.