Pakistan has strongly rejected Donald Trump’s assertion that it is among a handful of nations actively testing nuclear weapons. A senior Pakistani security official told CBS News that Pakistan was “not the first to carry out nuclear tests and will not be the first to resume nuclear tests”.
The rare public rebuttal comes at a time when Pakistan is otherwise seeking to strengthen ties with the Trump administration. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has praised the US president for brokering a ceasefire with India following a brief military conflict in May, though India has downplayed Mr Trump’s role.
Last week, Mr Trump ordered the Pentagon to “immediately” begin “testing our nuclear weapons”, ending a three-decade-old moratorium on US nuclear testing. In an interview with 60 Minutes, he claimed that Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan were also testing nuclear weapons. “Russia's testing, and China's testing… and certainly North Korea's been testing. Pakistan's been testing,” he said.
When pressed that he was conflating nuclear warhead tests with missile tests, Mr Trump argued that countries test “way underground” without announcing them. Pakistan has maintained a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing since its last explosive test in 1998 and is not a signatory to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
China also dismissed Mr Trump’s claim, with a foreign ministry spokesman stating that Beijing had adhered to its nuclear testing moratorium for decades. Experts have warned that Mr Trump’s order risks triggering a new arms race, as the world’s nuclear powers together possess over 12,000 warheads. The US and Russia alone hold roughly 87 per cent of the global stockpile.
