SSridhar wrote: ↑02 Oct 2025 21:41
The same US story we have heard for 70 years now. 'supporting US jobs' is probably a new addition.
Op Sindoor revealed that (despite the best efforts of the world's two largest economies, and plenty of other large economies besides) the "military balance in South Asia" is now dramatically skewed-- akin to that between George H.W. Bush's USA and Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1990. Surely this is not the balance they wish to preserve without alteration.
Pakistan is trying very hard to play both sides of the US/China equation. They are hoping to get as much mileage out of Trump's favour (based on the centrality of his family-owned WLF cryptocurrency fund to laundering TSPA/ISI's criminal wealth) while he lasts, and meanwhile probably telling the Chinese that their renewed relationship with Trump is for temporary gain while the Iron Brotherhood is strategic and permanent.
Nobody in China is fooled by this, and no one in the USA (except possibly Trump) is fooled either. Washington and CENTCOM are already pressing Pakistan to put their money where their mouth is by compelling the Taliban to give USA access to Bagram airbase. Not only are the Taliban unlikely to cooperate with Pakistan on this, but the Chinese will consider this a major redline if crossed. So it's already proving to be a delicate balancing act for the Pakis.
A new ingredient in the recipe is the Saudis cashing in their chips with respect to Pakistan's nukes. The Saudi-Pak agreement-- I believe-- is about Riyadh getting direct access to whatever Paki nukes exist, and nothing else. The Pakistani military was IN ANY CASE offering itself up as a rented thug force for the Saudis-- Rawheel Sharif himself was in command of the cannon fodder KSA was sending into Yemen, a conflict he handled with the usual panache of Pakistani military expertise. So there is no question of KSA needing this deal to get the Pakistanis to act as their chowkidars. On the other hand, the Saudis have neither the capability nor intent to tangle with India in case of another Op Sindoor.
What was in it for Pakistan when they signed the Saudi-Pak deal? Money, of course. Some have speculated that KSA could be a deniable conduit for the US to supply weapons to Pakistan after the miserable failure of its Chinese armaments during Op Sindoor-- but even under Trump, this is not a pipeline the US will happily open without Pakistan meeting hard benchmarks of performance, one of these being Bagram airbase.
The responses of Iran and Israel to the KSA-Pakistan deal are even more interesting. Iran has made a statement "welcoming" the defence agreement-- why? Is it to put a brave face on the inevitable, or do they see an angle by which they (and their allies in Beijing and Moscow) end up benefiting from it? Israel for its part has remained silent; they had probably gamed KSA's acquisition of nukes as something that would happen sooner or later ever since the Photochor Khan network was funded by Riyadh, and don't expect it to change their calculus significantly. On the other hand KSA having nukes could spur Iran, Turkey, and others to accelerate their own programs in a race to declare NW status.
Pakistan in all this will probably insist that KSA's authority over Paki nukes remain "recessed" and not publicized, because being open about it will deflate one of their last remaining claims to exceptional status... that of being the "sole Islamic nuclear power".
