Washington, Nov. 7 -- Pakistan's primary motive for developing nuclear weapons was to counter India, but Islamabad's nuclear ambition under its architect and a prolific proliferator, Abdul Qadeer Khan, evolved it into an "Islamic bomb" with intentions to extend and accelerate the technology to other Islamic nations, including Iran, as revealed by former CIA officer Richard Barlow.

In an interview with ANI, Barlow, who was part of the intelligence agency as a counterproliferation officer during Pakistan's clandestine nuclear activities in the 1980s, detailed how Khan's network provided critical gas centrifuge technology and possibly nuclear weapons plans to Iran in the early 1990s, accelerating Tehran's programme by decades.

He noted tha...