Word: pakistans
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Iran's neighbors could play a decisive role in determining whether any sanctions aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear ambitions are effective - and one Iran neighbor from whom the U.S. should expect little support on the issue is Pakistan. Ostensibly Washington's key ally in the troubled region, Pakistan also maintains a longtime (if sometimes fraught) friendship with Tehran. And as President Asif Ali Zardari's government moves to strengthen ties with its neighbor in a bid to enhance Pakistan's economic prospects, Islamabad is keen to sit out the nuclear dispute. While Pakistan insists that it is not actively...
...government of Pakistan, and the average Pakistani citizen, looks at Iran as a friendly nation," Pakistan's Deputy Foreign Minister, Malik Amad Khan, told TIME in an interview. After Iran, Pakistan has the second largest Shi'ite Muslim population; its 33 million Shi'ites constitute nearly double the number in Iraq. Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, both countries were members of the anti-Soviet CENTO security pact, and despite the Islamic Republic's aggressive anti-U.S. stance, Pakistan became one of the first countries to recognize Ayatullah Khomeini's regime. (See the top 10 players in Iran's power...
...Pakistan's role in Iran's nuclear development has been more than passive spectator, however; Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb, admitted five years ago that he passed nuclear secrets to Tehran and Libya. The disclosures stung Islamabad and forced then President Pervez Musharraf to act against Khan, before issuing a pardon and confining the proliferator, who is still hailed as a national hero in Pakistan, to house arrest. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable North-West Frontier Province...
...program. "If Iran succeeds in acquiring nuclear technology, we will be a strong bloc in the region to counter international pressure," Khan told the interviewer. "Iran's nuclear capability will neutralize Israel's power," he added, adopting the pan-Islamist rhetoric that has endeared him to conservative opinion in Pakistan...
...Washington's bidding. But even so, al-Qaeda remains a marginal factor. Bin Laden may have imagined that 9/11 would anoint him the head of a resurgent caliphate in the making, but instead it has reduced him and his movement to a life of duck-and-cover in Pakistan's wild frontier - and a political address otherwise known as oblivion. History marches on without them...