By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: US President Donald Trump said Pakistan has been testing nuclear weapons, listing it with Russia, China and North Korea as countries he said are advancing their arsenals while the United States holds to a decades-old moratorium.
The president’s comments, made during a CBS “60 Minutes” interview broadcast on Sunday, came without any details or evidence on Pakistan’s recent nuclear test. “Pakistan has been testing. […] But they don’t go and tell you about it,” Trump said, adding that such activities occur “way underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the test. You feel a little bit of a vibration.”
In a wide-ranging interview, President Trump defended his recent directive to resume American nuclear tests for the first time in more than three decades. The president’s comments, which drew pushback from the interviewer, Lesley Stahl, came amid confusion over his social media post last month instructing the Pentagon — which he referred to as the “Department of War” — to restart nuclear testing “immediately.”
The United States has not conducted a nuclear explosion since 1992, relying instead on simulations and other methods to maintain its arsenal. Trump, who has frequently boasted about rebuilding the nation’s nuclear capabilities during his first term, argued that testing was necessary to ensure the weapons’ reliability, especially given what he described as covert activities by other nations.
“Well, because you have to see how they work,” he said when asked why the United States needed to test. “Testing is because Russia announced that they are gonna do a test. If you notice, North Korea is testing constantly, other countries are testing. We are the only country that doesn’t test, I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t test.”
Pressed on whether this meant detonating nuclear weapons after a 30-year hiatus, the president replied, “I am saying that we are going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do.” Stahl pointed out that North Korea is the only nation actively conducting nuclear tests, with Russia’s last explosion in 1990 and China’s in 1996. Trump insisted otherwise. “You just don’t know about it,” he said of Russia and China.
He added that Pakistan has also been testing, though without public disclosure. “Pakistan has been testing. […] But they don’t go and tell you about it,” he said. “And as powerful as they are — you know it’s a big world, you don’t necessarily know where they are testing. They test way underground where people don’t know exactly what’s happening with the test. You feel a little bit of a vibration.”
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state since 1998, has not conducted a publicly acknowledged nuclear detonation since then, and independent monitoring organisations, including the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, reported no seismic signals indicative of an explosion in the region in recent months. The country is believed to have about 170 warheads and a growing array of delivery systems, but it adheres to a no-first-use policy and has not signed the nuclear test ban treaty.
Trump’s reference to Pakistan appeared to coincide with recent speculation in the country over an unusual atmospheric phenomenon observed last week over Quetta, in Balochistan Province. Residents reported sighting a “rare lenticular cloud formation” during early morning prayers, prompting widespread online chatter that it might have been caused by a military test of a hypersonic ballistic missile or other advanced technology.
Defence minister Khawaja Asif dismissed the rumours earlier in the week as “mere speculation.” However, in an interview on Friday on the Samaa TV program “Mere Sawal,” he sidestepped a direct question about whether a missile test had occurred. “Now don’t ask all these questions. Ask such things in private,” he said.
The Pakistan Meteorological Department later posted on X that the sighting was a lenticular cloud formation over the Koh-i-Murdar region. “The cloud appeared before sunrise, persisted for approximately 20 minutes, and dissipated just prior to sunrise,” the department said. Such clouds, according to the United Kingdom’s Met Office, are lens-shaped orographic wave formations that occur when stable air flows over hills or mountains at varying heights. “These strange, unnatural-looking clouds sometimes form downwind of hills or mountains … They look a lot like the traditional shape of flying saucers in science fiction, and real lenticular clouds are believed to be one of the most common explanations for UFO (unidentified flying object) sightings across the world,” the office has explained.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump’s assertion that the country is testing nuclear weapons.
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