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‘Pakistan will lose any conventional war with India’: Former CIA officer John Kiriakou
John Kiriakou said “nothing, literally nothing good will come of an actual war between India and Pakistan because the Pakistanis will lose”.
John Kiriakou, who has served as a CIA officer for 15 years, said Pakistan needs to come to a police conclusion that nothing good will come of the war between Pakistan and India, emphasising that Pakistan will lose in a conventional war. Kirikao also revealed that when he was stationed in Pakistan, he was told unofficially that the Pentagon controlled the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.
In an interview with ANI, the former CIA officer, who was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, said, “Nothing, literally nothing good will come of an actual war between India and Pakistan because the Pakistanis will lose. It's as simple as that. They'll lose. And I'm not talking about nuclear weapons -- I'm talking just about a conventional war. And so there is no benefit to constantly provoking Indians.”
‘Pentagon controls Pakistani arsenal’
Kiriakou also said that while being stationed in Pakistan in 2002, he was told that the Pentagon controlled the Pakistani arsenal
Kiriakou said when he was stationed in Pakistan in 2002, he was told unofficially that the Pentagon controlled the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and that India did not know about it. “I doubt that the Americans ever told India that the control of Pakistani nukes also lies with the US because of the vociferousness with which the Pakistanis have publicly maintained that they control their own nuclear weapons,” he added.
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'India said it will not tolerate Pakistan's nuclear blackmail'
He also talked about India's stance towards Pakistan, stating that India has said that it will not tolerate Pakistan's nuclear blackmail and will respond decisively to any terror attack.
He said India has taken strong action against terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, including surgical strikes on terror launchpads across the LoC in 2016, the Balakot airstrikes in 2019, and Operation Sindoor, which targeted terror infrastructure.
Kiriakou said while he was dealing specifically with counterterrorism, a colleague of his dealt with the issue of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear physicist.
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He also said that the US could have taken out Abdul Qadeer Khan (AQ Khan), who was deeply involved in Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, if they had adopted the Israeli approach, but he had the support of the Saudi government, which wanted him to be left alone.
Kiriakou spent the first half of his CIA career in analysis and the second in counterterrorism operations. In 2007, he blew the whistle on the agency’s torture program in a televised interview, leading to legal charges that were later dropped.
