In fact: Did India plan a covert military attack on a Pakistani nuclear reactor?

[Zarvan]

A 2007 satellite image of Pakistan’s nuclear facility. (Source:Google)
Last week, the US State department declassified its top-secret documents from 1984-85 which focus on the Pakistani nuclear programme. The CIA analysis, and the talking points for the US Ambassador to Islamabad while handing over President Ronald Reagan’s letter to General Zia-ul Haq, show that the US warned Pakistan about an Indian military attack on the Pakistani nuclear reactor at Kahuta.

But the Americans were not alone in anticipating an Indian attack. Prof Rajesh Rajagopalan of JNU recently pointed to The End of the Cold War and the Third World: New Perspectives on Regional Conflict, a book by Sergey Radchenko and Artemy M. Kalinovsky based on the declassified documents of the Eastern Block. Radchenko says that documents in the Hungarian archives show that the Soviets had shared with the Hungarians India’s plans to attack Kahuta.

It is not clear though, Rajagopalan says, if the Soviets actually had access to any Indian plans or were only reporting widespread rumours. The rumours were indeed widespread, and The Washington Post had run a front-page story on December 20, 1982 headlined, ‘India said to eye raid on Pakistan’s A-plants’. It said military advisers had proposed an attack to prime minister Indira Gandhi in March 1982 but she had rejected it.

In his book, India’s Nuclear Policy —1964-98: A Personal Recollection, K Subrahmanyam recollected that the Indian proposal to Pakistan for non-attack on each other’s nuclear facilities, which he suggested to Rajiv Gandhi, was an outcome of such rumours in the Western media. Although the ‘Agreement on the Non-Attack of Nuclear Facilities between Indian and Pakistan’ was first verbally agreed upon in 1985, it was formally signed in 1988 and ratified in 1991. Since 1992, India and Pakistan have been exchanging the list of their nuclear facilities on January 1 every year.



But how close was India to attacking Kahuta in the 1980s? The first time India is believed to have considered such an attack is in 1981. The idea obviously originated from the daring Israeli attack of June 7, 1981, that destroyed the under-construction Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. Eight F-16s of the Israeli Air Force flew more than 600 miles in the skies of three enemy nations to destroy the target and returned unscathed.

In 1996, WPS Sidhu, senior fellow for foreign policy at Brookings India, was the first to state that after the induction of Jaguars, Indian Air Force (IAF) had conducted a brief study in June 1981 on the feasibility of attacking Kahuta. The study concluded that India could “attack and neutralise” Kahuta but feared that such an attack would result in a full-blown war between India and Pakistan. This was besides the concerns that an Indian attack will beget an immediate retaliatory — some say, even pre-emptive — Pakistani air strike on Indian nuclear facilities.

In their book, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Conspiracy, Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark claim that Indian military officials secretly travelled to Israel in February 1983 to buy electronic warfare equipment to neutralise Kahuta’s air defences. Israel reportedly also provided India with technical details of the F-16 aircraft in exchange for Indians providing them some details about the MiG-23 aircraft. In mid- to late-1983, according to strategic affairs expert Bharat Karnad, Indira Gandhi asked the IAF once again to plan for an air strike on Kahuta.

The mission was cancelled after Pakistani nuclear scientist Munir Ahmed Khan met Indian Atomic Energy Commission chief-designate Raja Ramanna at an international meet in Vienna and threatened a retaliatory strike on Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay.

The next time India is believed to have seriously considered attacking Kahuta was in September-October 1984. Details of the Pakistani nuclear programme crossing the weaponisation enrichment threshold had then begun to emerge. As seen from documents declassified last week, on September 16, 1984, US Ambassador Dean Hinton told Zia that if the US were to see signs that India was preparing for an attack, they would notify Pakistan immediately.

On September 22, a reliable source from a foreign country — later assumed to be the CIA Deputy Director — reported to the Pakistani top brass that there was the possibility of an Indian air strike. The same day, ABC television also reported that a preemptive Indian attack on Pakistani nuclear facilities was imminent, which was based on a briefing made by the CIA to a US Senate intelligence subcommittee.

But India did not go ahead with its plans to attack Kahuta because the element of surprise was lost. According to Subrahmanyam, an increase in air defences around Kahuta was “proof, if any more were needed, that our covert intentions to hit Kahuta were not secret anymore”.

It has also been rumoured that Israeli air force was part of the plans to attack Kahuta in 1984 because it did not want to see an “Islamic Bomb” developed by Pakistan. Israel was supposed to lead this attack and not merely play the role of advising the IAF. Bharat Karnad has written that Israeli aircraft were to be staged from Jamnagar airfield in Gujarat, refuel at a satellite airfield in North India and track the Himalayas to avoid early radar detection, but Indira Gandhi eventually vetoed the idea. Levy and Scott-Clark though claim that Indira Gandhi had signed off on the Israeli-led operation in March 1984 but backed off after the US state department warned India “the US will be responsive if India persists”.

Conversations with some people associated with the IAF in the early 1980s support the idea of an Israeli connection to Indian plans to attack Kahuta. It tells us that India had seriously considered attacking Kahuta three decades ago but chose not to, mainly due to the fears of a retaliatory Pakistani strike on Trombay and the danger of an isolated strike escalating into a full-blown war.

sushant.singh@expressindia.com

In fact: Did India plan a covert military attack on a Pakistani nuclear reactor? | The Indian Express
@nair @GURU DUTT @MilSpec @third eye @Water Car Engineer

 

[Godman]

this is unsurprising

 

[war&peace]

This had been an open secret and the message from Pakistan to both India and Israel was loud and clear. They even planned such strike just before Pakistan's nuke test in May 28,1998

 

[Nilgiri]

India would have been stupid not to at least plan something along these lines.

Basic common sense.

 

[macnurv]

Well that was stupid.

 

[Neutron]

[QUOTE="Zarvan, post: 7812488, member: 38]
A 2007 satellite image of Pakistan’s nuclear facility. (Source:Google)
Last week, the US State department declassified its top-secret documents from 1984-85 which focus on the Pakistani nuclear programme. The CIA analysis, and the talking points for the US Ambassador to Islamabad while handing over President Ronald Reagan’s letter to General Zia-ul Haq, show that the US warned Pakistan about an Indian military attack on the Pakistani nuclear reactor at Kahuta.

But the Americans were not alone in anticipating an Indian attack. Prof Rajesh Rajagopalan of JNU recently pointed to The End of the Cold War and the Third World: New Perspectives on Regional Conflict, a book by Sergey Radchenko and Artemy M. Kalinovsky based on the declassified documents of the Eastern Block. Radchenko says that documents in the Hungarian archives show that the Soviets had shared with the Hungarians India’s plans to attack Kahuta.

It is not clear though, Rajagopalan says, if the Soviets actually had access to any Indian plans or were only reporting widespread rumours. The rumours were indeed widespread, and The Washington Post had run a front-page story on December 20, 1982 headlined, ‘India said to eye raid on Pakistan’s A-plants’. It said military advisers had proposed an attack to prime minister Indira Gandhi in March 1982 but she had rejected it.

In his book, India’s Nuclear Policy —1964-98: A Personal Recollection, K Subrahmanyam recollected that the Indian proposal to Pakistan for non-attack on each other’s nuclear facilities, which he suggested to Rajiv Gandhi, was an outcome of such rumours in the Western media. Although the ‘Agreement on the Non-Attack of Nuclear Facilities between Indian and Pakistan’ was first verbally agreed upon in 1985, it was formally signed in 1988 and ratified in 1991. Since 1992, India and Pakistan have been exchanging the list of their nuclear facilities on January 1 every year.



But how close was India to attacking Kahuta in the 1980s? The first time India is believed to have considered such an attack is in 1981. The idea obviously originated from the daring Israeli attack of June 7, 1981, that destroyed the under-construction Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. Eight F-16s of the Israeli Air Force flew more than 600 miles in the skies of three enemy nations to destroy the target and returned unscathed.

In 1996, WPS Sidhu, senior fellow for foreign policy at Brookings India, was the first to state that after the induction of Jaguars, Indian Air Force (IAF) had conducted a brief study in June 1981 on the feasibility of attacking Kahuta. The study concluded that India could “attack and neutralise” Kahuta but feared that such an attack would result in a full-blown war between India and Pakistan. This was besides the concerns that an Indian attack will beget an immediate retaliatory — some say, even pre-emptive — Pakistani air strike on Indian nuclear facilities.

In their book, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Conspiracy, Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark claim that Indian military officials secretly travelled to Israel in February 1983 to buy electronic warfare equipment to neutralise Kahuta’s air defences. Israel reportedly also provided India with technical details of the F-16 aircraft in exchange for Indians providing them some details about the MiG-23 aircraft. In mid- to late-1983, according to strategic affairs expert Bharat Karnad, Indira Gandhi asked the IAF once again to plan for an air strike on Kahuta.

The mission was cancelled after Pakistani nuclear scientist Munir Ahmed Khan met Indian Atomic Energy Commission chief-designate Raja Ramanna at an international meet in Vienna and threatened a retaliatory strike on Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay.

The next time India is believed to have seriously considered attacking Kahuta was in September-October 1984. Details of the Pakistani nuclear programme crossing the weaponisation enrichment threshold had then begun to emerge. As seen from documents declassified last week, on September 16, 1984, US Ambassador Dean Hinton told Zia that if the US were to see signs that India was preparing for an attack, they would notify Pakistan immediately.

On September 22, a reliable source from a foreign country — later assumed to be the CIA Deputy Director — reported to the Pakistani top brass that there was the possibility of an Indian air strike. The same day, ABC television also reported that a preemptive Indian attack on Pakistani nuclear facilities was imminent, which was based on a briefing made by the CIA to a US Senate intelligence subcommittee.

But India did not go ahead with its plans to attack Kahuta because the element of surprise was lost. According to Subrahmanyam, an increase in air defences around Kahuta was “proof, if any more were needed, that our covert intentions to hit Kahuta were not secret anymore”.

It has also been rumoured that Israeli air force was part of the plans to attack Kahuta in 1984 because it did not want to see an “Islamic Bomb” developed by Pakistan. Israel was supposed to lead this attack and not merely play the role of advising the IAF. Bharat Karnad has written that Israeli aircraft were to be staged from Jamnagar airfield in Gujarat, refuel at a satellite airfield in North India and track the Himalayas to avoid early radar detection, but Indira Gandhi eventually vetoed the idea. Levy and Scott-Clark though claim that Indira Gandhi had signed off on the Israeli-led operation in March 1984 but backed off after the US state department warned India “the US will be responsive if India persists”.

Conversations with some people associated with the IAF in the early 1980s support the idea of an Israeli connection to Indian plans to attack Kahuta. It tells us that India had seriously considered attacking Kahuta three decades ago but chose not to, mainly due to the fears of a retaliatory Pakistani strike on Trombay and the danger of an isolated strike escalating into a full-blown war.

sushant.singh@expressindia.com

In fact: Did India plan a covert military attack on a Pakistani nuclear reactor? | The Indian Express
@nair @GURU DUTT @MilSpec @third eye @Water Car Engineer[/QUOTE]

USA notified Pakistan and shared info about indian plans. Come on I don't believe this.
If it is fact we can say thank you US.
You can ask maj amir ex isi official, he was part of this operation against RAW and he never mentioned in his interview about this sharing of info between US and Pakistan.
ISI already new plan of india as thier operator in pakistan was under survilance of maj amir himself .
..................................................................................

 

[The-king]

@Zarvan
Dear Zarvan whatever they plan and failed it is past now we are proven more successful nuclear armed nation rapidly growing our nuclear technology and weaponry. Now India even think to attack on our nuclear facilities but in past Israel provoke India to do so which exposed and very well handled by Pakistan but the event below mentioned is quite different as the facts known to me Israeli / Indian plan was exposed by estranged girl friend of a nuclear scientist or engineer who was involved and by chance she knew about the plan. After breakup she was very confused and worried and met her another female friend who was wife of an army officer when the officer knew this not totally he informed Maj Imtiaz (Billa) and he interrogated the matter and arrested the culprits and Zia Govt took serous measures to avoid the attack. Actually Zia informed USA about the attack.
Regards,

 

[Umair Nawaz]

Rubbish, We know exactly with whom and when they were trying to attack. It was with israel that they will attack, It was from Jammu Airbase that their both airforces wanted to attack, ISI provided the intel to Gen Zia with a picture of israeli aircrafts parked on the jammu with indian a/c, ready to attack.

Gen Zia flew over night to india in a secret visit and their leader hurried to welcome him in airport, but as soon as he landed, he grabbed him by back of his neck and told him that i know what yr planning to do and in response Pakistan will blow up yr Trombay(?) Bombay nuke facilities which will be more easier for Pakistan too. And he left immediately by just spending mere minutes on their soil.

Thats how their leaders had cancelled the raid, not because ''indira gandhi'' rejected it for not apparent reason like this article suggests!

There is no smoke without fire.

Late in UN and other international events Israel was also made to admit its role!

 

[Maarkhoor]

Adding to below Mr. Munir Ahmed khan played important role in stopping India to attack our nuclear facilities he was in Europe when Zia Govt inform him about the reports that Israel with the help of Indian Govt trying to attack our nuclear facilities then Mr. Munir Ahmed Khan call Indian Scientist (forget his name) to tell him very politely about Indian Govt's plan and Pakistani retaliation plan Indian scietist left the meeting in panic and informed Indian Govt that Pakistani knew every thing and they are planin to attack Trombay in retaliation, immediately Indian Govt stop the attack and inform their scientist to convey Dr. Munir Ahmed Khan that they have no plane to attack Pakistani nuclear sites.

In 1981, Israel's Operation Opera attacked Iraq's Osirak Nuclear Reactor.[7] Great panic was caused in Pakistan and hectic discussions now began to take place between ministries of Science, Foreign Affairs, and Defence over this issue each day.[7] In 1983, the ISI gained advance knowledge on similar plans on attacking Pakistan's facilities, namely KRL andPinstech.[7] Although the PAF was high alert, the Pakistan government leaked prior information to Khan who was at the IAEAto mediate the tensions in the region.[7] At that time, Khan was attending the IAEA's General Conference on nuclear safetyissues and received a secret-coded message, through Ambassador of Pakistan to Austria Abdul Sattar, from the Foreign ministry.[7] Khan invited dr. Raja Ramana of Indian Atomic Energy Commission to the dinner at the Imperial Hotel at Viennato confirm the veracity of the knowledge.[7] Reportedly, Khan told Raja Ramana that "any attack on Pakistan's [nuclear] facilities would trigger a possible Pakistan retaliatory strike on Indian nuclear facilities at Trombay, which will result in the release of radioactivity causing a major disaster.[7] Upon returning, Raja Ramana held leaks information to Indian government and convened Khan's message to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi about Pakistan's retaliatory strikes.[7] Plans were postponed and the matter subsequently shelved.[7]

In 1988, the governments of India and Pakistan reached to the concessions for agreeing that both countries would not attack each other's nuclear facilities.[63]
Munir Ahmad Khan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A 2007 satellite image of Pakistan’s nuclear facility. (Source:Google)
Last week, the US State department declassified its top-secret documents from 1984-85 which focus on the Pakistani nuclear programme. The CIA analysis, and the talking points for the US Ambassador to Islamabad while handing over President Ronald Reagan’s letter to General Zia-ul Haq, show that the US warned Pakistan about an Indian military attack on the Pakistani nuclear reactor at Kahuta.

But the Americans were not alone in anticipating an Indian attack. Prof Rajesh Rajagopalan of JNU recently pointed to The End of the Cold War and the Third World: New Perspectives on Regional Conflict, a book by Sergey Radchenko and Artemy M. Kalinovsky based on the declassified documents of the Eastern Block. Radchenko says that documents in the Hungarian archives show that the Soviets had shared with the Hungarians India’s plans to attack Kahuta.

It is not clear though, Rajagopalan says, if the Soviets actually had access to any Indian plans or were only reporting widespread rumours. The rumours were indeed widespread, and The Washington Post had run a front-page story on December 20, 1982 headlined, ‘India said to eye raid on Pakistan’s A-plants’. It said military advisers had proposed an attack to prime minister Indira Gandhi in March 1982 but she had rejected it.

In his book, India’s Nuclear Policy —1964-98: A Personal Recollection, K Subrahmanyam recollected that the Indian proposal to Pakistan for non-attack on each other’s nuclear facilities, which he suggested to Rajiv Gandhi, was an outcome of such rumours in the Western media. Although the ‘Agreement on the Non-Attack of Nuclear Facilities between Indian and Pakistan’ was first verbally agreed upon in 1985, it was formally signed in 1988 and ratified in 1991. Since 1992, India and Pakistan have been exchanging the list of their nuclear facilities on January 1 every year.



But how close was India to attacking Kahuta in the 1980s? The first time India is believed to have considered such an attack is in 1981. The idea obviously originated from the daring Israeli attack of June 7, 1981, that destroyed the under-construction Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. Eight F-16s of the Israeli Air Force flew more than 600 miles in the skies of three enemy nations to destroy the target and returned unscathed.

In 1996, WPS Sidhu, senior fellow for foreign policy at Brookings India, was the first to state that after the induction of Jaguars, Indian Air Force (IAF) had conducted a brief study in June 1981 on the feasibility of attacking Kahuta. The study concluded that India could “attack and neutralise” Kahuta but feared that such an attack would result in a full-blown war between India and Pakistan. This was besides the concerns that an Indian attack will beget an immediate retaliatory — some say, even pre-emptive — Pakistani air strike on Indian nuclear facilities.

In their book, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Conspiracy, Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark claim that Indian military officials secretly travelled to Israel in February 1983 to buy electronic warfare equipment to neutralise Kahuta’s air defences. Israel reportedly also provided India with technical details of the F-16 aircraft in exchange for Indians providing them some details about the MiG-23 aircraft. In mid- to late-1983, according to strategic affairs expert Bharat Karnad, Indira Gandhi asked the IAF once again to plan for an air strike on Kahuta.

The mission was cancelled after Pakistani nuclear scientist Munir Ahmed Khan met Indian Atomic Energy Commission chief-designate Raja Ramanna at an international meet in Vienna and threatened a retaliatory strike on Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay.

The next time India is believed to have seriously considered attacking Kahuta was in September-October 1984. Details of the Pakistani nuclear programme crossing the weaponisation enrichment threshold had then begun to emerge. As seen from documents declassified last week, on September 16, 1984, US Ambassador Dean Hinton told Zia that if the US were to see signs that India was preparing for an attack, they would notify Pakistan immediately.

On September 22, a reliable source from a foreign country — later assumed to be the CIA Deputy Director — reported to the Pakistani top brass that there was the possibility of an Indian air strike. The same day, ABC television also reported that a preemptive Indian attack on Pakistani nuclear facilities was imminent, which was based on a briefing made by the CIA to a US Senate intelligence subcommittee.

But India did not go ahead with its plans to attack Kahuta because the element of surprise was lost. According to Subrahmanyam, an increase in air defences around Kahuta was “proof, if any more were needed, that our covert intentions to hit Kahuta were not secret anymore”.

It has also been rumoured that Israeli air force was part of the plans to attack Kahuta in 1984 because it did not want to see an “Islamic Bomb” developed by Pakistan. Israel was supposed to lead this attack and not merely play the role of advising the IAF. Bharat Karnad has written that Israeli aircraft were to be staged from Jamnagar airfield in Gujarat, refuel at a satellite airfield in North India and track the Himalayas to avoid early radar detection, but Indira Gandhi eventually vetoed the idea. Levy and Scott-Clark though claim that Indira Gandhi had signed off on the Israeli-led operation in March 1984 but backed off after the US state department warned India “the US will be responsive if India persists”.

Conversations with some people associated with the IAF in the early 1980s support the idea of an Israeli connection to Indian plans to attack Kahuta. It tells us that India had seriously considered attacking Kahuta three decades ago but chose not to, mainly due to the fears of a retaliatory Pakistani strike on Trombay and the danger of an isolated strike escalating into a full-blown war.

sushant.singh@expressindia.com

In fact: Did India plan a covert military attack on a Pakistani nuclear reactor? | The Indian Express
@nair @GURU DUTT @MilSpec @third eye @Water Car Engineer

 

[I S I]

The study concluded that India could “attack and neutralise” Kahuta but feared that such an attack would result in a full-blown war between India and Pakistan. This was besides the concerns that an Indian attack will beget an immediate retaliatory — some say, even pre-emptive — Pakistani air strike on Indian nuclear facilities.

Asli pari ka dhaaga......



Baaki to samajh gaye hoge...

 

[A2Z]

One thing is for sure that India never had balls to conduct such an operation alone it would have been Israeli support that had made them think about it. Apart from this I had read this somewhere else as well that Israel wanted to conduct a mission to destroy Kahutta similar to what they did in Iraq. The plannings were done and Israelis even had trained on full scale model of Kahutta build in Negev. Everything was done but the Indians backed out during final moments as they new Israel would somehow get away but Pakistan would not let India get away with this.

 

[naveen mishra]

A 2007 satellite image of Pakistan’s nuclear facility. (Source:Google)
Last week, the US State department declassified its top-secret documents from 1984-85 which focus on the Pakistani nuclear programme. The CIA analysis, and the talking points for the US Ambassador to Islamabad while handing over President Ronald Reagan’s letter to General Zia-ul Haq, show that the US warned Pakistan about an Indian military attack on the Pakistani nuclear reactor at Kahuta.

But the Americans were not alone in anticipating an Indian attack. Prof Rajesh Rajagopalan of JNU recently pointed to The End of the Cold War and the Third World: New Perspectives on Regional Conflict, a book by Sergey Radchenko and Artemy M. Kalinovsky based on the declassified documents of the Eastern Block. Radchenko says that documents in the Hungarian archives show that the Soviets had shared with the Hungarians India’s plans to attack Kahuta.

It is not clear though, Rajagopalan says, if the Soviets actually had access to any Indian plans or were only reporting widespread rumours. The rumours were indeed widespread, and The Washington Post had run a front-page story on December 20, 1982 headlined, ‘India said to eye raid on Pakistan’s A-plants’. It said military advisers had proposed an attack to prime minister Indira Gandhi in March 1982 but she had rejected it.

In his book, India’s Nuclear Policy —1964-98: A Personal Recollection, K Subrahmanyam recollected that the Indian proposal to Pakistan for non-attack on each other’s nuclear facilities, which he suggested to Rajiv Gandhi, was an outcome of such rumours in the Western media. Although the ‘Agreement on the Non-Attack of Nuclear Facilities between Indian and Pakistan’ was first verbally agreed upon in 1985, it was formally signed in 1988 and ratified in 1991. Since 1992, India and Pakistan have been exchanging the list of their nuclear facilities on January 1 every year.



But how close was India to attacking Kahuta in the 1980s? The first time India is believed to have considered such an attack is in 1981. The idea obviously originated from the daring Israeli attack of June 7, 1981, that destroyed the under-construction Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. Eight F-16s of the Israeli Air Force flew more than 600 miles in the skies of three enemy nations to destroy the target and returned unscathed.

In 1996, WPS Sidhu, senior fellow for foreign policy at Brookings India, was the first to state that after the induction of Jaguars, Indian Air Force (IAF) had conducted a brief study in June 1981 on the feasibility of attacking Kahuta. The study concluded that India could “attack and neutralise” Kahuta but feared that such an attack would result in a full-blown war between India and Pakistan. This was besides the concerns that an Indian attack will beget an immediate retaliatory — some say, even pre-emptive — Pakistani air strike on Indian nuclear facilities.

In their book, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Conspiracy, Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark claim that Indian military officials secretly travelled to Israel in February 1983 to buy electronic warfare equipment to neutralise Kahuta’s air defences. Israel reportedly also provided India with technical details of the F-16 aircraft in exchange for Indians providing them some details about the MiG-23 aircraft. In mid- to late-1983, according to strategic affairs expert Bharat Karnad, Indira Gandhi asked the IAF once again to plan for an air strike on Kahuta.

The mission was cancelled after Pakistani nuclear scientist Munir Ahmed Khan met Indian Atomic Energy Commission chief-designate Raja Ramanna at an international meet in Vienna and threatened a retaliatory strike on Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay.

The next time India is believed to have seriously considered attacking Kahuta was in September-October 1984. Details of the Pakistani nuclear programme crossing the weaponisation enrichment threshold had then begun to emerge. As seen from documents declassified last week, on September 16, 1984, US Ambassador Dean Hinton told Zia that if the US were to see signs that India was preparing for an attack, they would notify Pakistan immediately.

On September 22, a reliable source from a foreign country — later assumed to be the CIA Deputy Director — reported to the Pakistani top brass that there was the possibility of an Indian air strike. The same day, ABC television also reported that a preemptive Indian attack on Pakistani nuclear facilities was imminent, which was based on a briefing made by the CIA to a US Senate intelligence subcommittee.

But India did not go ahead with its plans to attack Kahuta because the element of surprise was lost. According to Subrahmanyam, an increase in air defences around Kahuta was “proof, if any more were needed, that our covert intentions to hit Kahuta were not secret anymore”.

It has also been rumoured that Israeli air force was part of the plans to attack Kahuta in 1984 because it did not want to see an “Islamic Bomb” developed by Pakistan. Israel was supposed to lead this attack and not merely play the role of advising the IAF. Bharat Karnad has written that Israeli aircraft were to be staged from Jamnagar airfield in Gujarat, refuel at a satellite airfield in North India and track the Himalayas to avoid early radar detection, but Indira Gandhi eventually vetoed the idea. Levy and Scott-Clark though claim that Indira Gandhi had signed off on the Israeli-led operation in March 1984 but backed off after the US state department warned India “the US will be responsive if India persists”.

Conversations with some people associated with the IAF in the early 1980s support the idea of an Israeli connection to Indian plans to attack Kahuta. It tells us that India had seriously considered attacking Kahuta three decades ago but chose not to, mainly due to the fears of a retaliatory Pakistani strike on Trombay and the danger of an isolated strike escalating into a full-blown war.

sushant.singh@expressindia.com

In fact: Did India plan a covert military attack on a Pakistani nuclear reactor? | The Indian Express
@nair @GURU DUTT @MilSpec @third eye @Water Car Engineer

don't worry...India don't have ball ......Pakistani army is much stronger and aggressive

every day Indian soldier being killed by Pakistani army in installment at Kashmir border .....kay ukhad liya ?

rahne bhi do yaar...tumhe bhi indian arm force ki aukat pata hai

 

[JonAsad]

contingency plans every country has one-
thats what militaries around the world do in their spare time aka peace time-

 

[zebra7]

contingency plans every country has one-
thats what militaries around the world do in their spare time aka peace time-

The doctrine, war plan and special operation plans are made way long before the operation by military analyst and experts keeping the conditions, response, and result in mind. It is in the hand of the Army General to activate it, but in this case needs an approval from the civil Political Government.

Although there was one documentory which I saw, shows how RAW brought the hair of one of the personal working in Kahuta Atomic Plant picked from the barber shop, analysed which confirm, Pakistani intenstion to make nuclear Bomb.

 

[war&peace]

Although there was one documentory which I saw, shows how RAW brought the hair of one of the personal working in Kahuta Atomic Plant picked from the barber shop, analysed which confirm, Pakistani intenstion to make nuclear Bomb.

How did they determine.....was the hair too stiff and hard and impregnated the wife of RAW's chief....I mean how just by hair?