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Iran’s ballistic missile program has rapidly evolved into one of the most advanced in the Middle East, posing a serious challenge to Israel’s air defense systems. The 2025 missile exchanges revealed critical vulnerabilities in Israel’s layered shield, highlighting a shifting balance where offensive missile technology may soon outpace even the most sophisticated defenses.
Pakistan’s emergence as a nuclear power on May 28, 1998, was shaped by deep security anxieties following the 1971 war and India’s 1974 nuclear test. Spearheaded by leaders like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and advanced under military stewardship, the program combined scientific innovation—led by Dr. A.Q. Khan—with a covert procurement network. The 1998 Chagai tests, responding to India’s Pokhran-II, marked Pakistan’s entry into the nuclear club, framed as a bid to restore regional strategic balance. Despite immediate sanctions, international responses soon softened. Nuclearization has since fostered a fragile deterrence in South Asia—curbing full-scale war while enabling low-intensity conflict, encapsulating the region’s enduring “stability-instability paradox.
Since India’s independence in 1947, the Sikh community has faced a persistent pattern of marginalization through legal subversion, political suppression, and violent repression. From the denial of religious identity in the Constitution to the storming of the Golden Temple and the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms, this article examines how state institutions have systematically undermined Sikh rights, expression, and autonomy—both within India and across borders.
![Pakistan's Afghan policy: People crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan are making their way through the Friendship Gate in Chaman [Image via Reuters].](https://southasiatimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2021-08-15T143158Z_1093398639_RC2Q5P9W5VTP_RTRMADP_3_AFGHANISTAN-CONFLICT-PAKISTAN.webp)
Pakistan’s Afghan policy: More than meets the eye. From borders to Cold War and Taliban, unpack the history shaping their relationship.
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