Former CIA officer Richard Barlow revealed that the proposed joint covert operation by India and Israel to bomb Pakistan’s Kahuta nuclear facility in the early 1980s to halt Islamabad’s atomic ambition could have “solved a lot of problems.”
He also called the disapproval of the operation by the then Indian government a “shame”.
During an interview with ANI, Barlow, a former CIA member who was part of the American intelligence agency as a counterproliferation officer during Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear activities in the 1980s, confirmed that he had heard of the reported plan within intelligence circles but was not directly involved, as he was out of government service during that period.
“I was out of government from 1982 until 1985. And I think that may have occurred while I was out of government. I heard about it at some point. But I didn’t get my teeth into it because it never happened,” Barlow said.
“It’s a shame that Indira [Gandhi] didn’t approve it; it would have solved a lot of problems,” he added.
According to reports and declassified accounts, Israel and India allegedly planned a preemptive airstrike on Pakistan’s Kahuta uranium enrichment plant — the core of its nuclear programme — to prevent Islamabad from developing and proliferating nuclear weapons, particularly to Iran, which is regarded as a grave adversary by Israel.
Barlow suggested that the US administration at the time, under then-President Ronald Reagan, would have strongly opposed any such strike, particularly from Israel, as it could have disrupted America’s covert war effort against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
According to Barlow, Pakistan exploited this dependency as leverage, with officials like Munir Ahmad Khan, former head of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), warning the US lawmakers, such as Stephen Solarz, that disrupting aid flows would jeopardise cooperation on Afghanistan.
“I think Reagan would have cut Menachem Begin’s ba**s off if he did anything like that. Because it would have interfered with the Afghan problem,” Barlow remarked, referring to the former Israeli Prime Minister’s potential involvement.
“As you alluded to, what Munir Khan said was that they were basically using the flow of covert aid to the Mujahideen as blackmail. I think that’s what Munir was saying to [US Congressman Stephen] Solarz–if you pull aid, we’re not going to support the Mujahideen anymore,” Barlow added.
The Kahuta enrichment facility, established under the direction of Pakistan’s architect of nuclear programme and a prolific proliferator, AQ Khan, later became central to Pakistan’s successful pursuit of nuclear weapons, culminating in its ‘first’ atomic tests in 1998.