New Delhi: A former CIA counter-proliferation officer has claimed that India and Israel once planned a covert operation to bomb Pakistan’s Kahuta nuclear facility, but the strike never took place because then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi refused to approve it.
Richard Barlow, who served in the CIA during the 1980s, told the Hindustan Times that the proposed plan—reportedly discussed in intelligence circles—was aimed at destroying Pakistan’s uranium-enrichment site, which later became central to its nuclear weapons programme.
“It’s a shame that Indira … didn’t approve it; it would have solved a lot of problems,” Barlow was quoted as saying. He clarified, however, that he was not personally involved in the operation. “I heard about it at some point. But I didn’t get my teeth into it because it never happened,” he said.
According to Barlow, the operation was believed to involve coordination between India and Israel. However, he suggested that geopolitical realities at the time—particularly the United States’ strategic engagement with Pakistan during the Soviet–Afghan war—would have made Washington oppose such a move.
Barlow said the Reagan administration viewed Pakistan as a key ally in its covert support for the Afghan Mujahideen. Any attack on Pakistani territory, especially by Israel, could have disrupted that arrangement.
The Kahuta facility, overseen by nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, went on to play a pivotal role in Pakistan’s atomic weapons programme, culminating in the country’s first nuclear tests in 1998.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs has not commented directly on the claim, though spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal recently reiterated New Delhi’s concerns over Pakistan’s “clandestine and illegal nuclear activities” while responding