Iran has an ongoing nuclear research program which, it insists, is for peaceful purposes. It allows the IAEA inspectors access to its nuclear projects. Despite repeated assurances by Tehran of its peaceful intentions, the United States and, more particularly, Israel, have refused to accept Iran's lack of interest in nuclear arms. Latest news reports from Israel repeat its intelligence agency's view that Iran could explode its own atomic bomb within four to six years. Finally, the ties between Pakistan and the oil-rich Arab Gulf states are extensive and of long standing.
Pakistani expatriates play an important role in the economies of the six Arab Gulf countries.
They provide vital skilled labour in these states. Pakistani expatriates are to be found in large numbers in the armed forces of these countries. During the 1980s Pakistan seconded its own elite troops to safeguard the ruler and senior princes of Saudi Arabia, who felt they could not fully trust their own military. In the civilian sector today, most of the pilots of the region's Gulf Air are Pakistani. In an interview on Sunday in the London-based Observer, Dr Abdul Kadeer Khan, 'father' of Pakistan's atom bomb programme, denied reports that the BCCI had partly funded the country's nuclear programme.