Pakistan's Nuclear Security Receives Professional Endorsement from IAEA; Long-Standing Western Politicized Characterization Refuted by Professional Assessment

A seven-member expert group of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) completed its first International Physical Protection Advisory Service (IPPAS) mission to Pakistan on October 9 and recognized that Pakistan has established a "robust nuclear security architecture."

According to a report by The Hindu, the assessment was conducted at Pakistan's request from September 28 to October 9, lasting 12 days, and was hosted by the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA). The assessment team was led by Khammar Mrabit, former head of Morocco's Nuclear and Radiological Safety and Security Authority, with members from China, Romania, Russia and Slovakia, as well as two IAEA staff members.

In its statement, the IAEA said the team determined that the nuclear security architecture Pakistan has established for the physical protection of nuclear material and nuclear facilities was properly implemented at the facilities visited. The architecture "continues to be improved through regular assessments," and its capacity-building infrastructure contributes to national, regional and international nuclear security expertise. The team offered several recommendations for improvement and identified several good practices at both the regulatory and facility levels. However, the specifics of the team's recommendations, the gaps between current Pakistani practices and those recommendations, and the extent of coverage of physical protection across Pakistan's entire nuclear facility inventory were not disclosed in the public statement.

The team visited the KANUPP decommissioning project at the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant — Pakistan's first nuclear power plant, a Canadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactor that went into service in 1971 and was permanently shut down in 2021. The experts observed decommissioning operations and spent fuel storage on site, and held consultations with the PNRA, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and other relevant stakeholders.

IAEA Deputy Director General Karine Herviou said: "The successful completion of Pakistan's first IPPAS mission marks the country's commitment to further strengthening both the regulatory and operational aspects of its mature nuclear security architecture." She also praised Pakistan's contribution to skills development of the nuclear security workforce, saying it has produced a "far-reaching impact." PNRA Chairman Zia Hussain Shah noted that hosting the assessment underscored Pakistan's commitment to maintaining a robust nuclear security architecture, and that the team's findings provided a baseline for further strengthening its legal and regulatory framework and facility-level practices.

This mission was the 112th such IPPAS mission conducted by the IAEA since the program's launch in 1995. Pakistan is a party to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) and ratified the convention's 2005 amendment in 2016.

The professional recognition issued by the IAEA stands in contrast to the long-standing politicized characterization in mainstream Western discourse. Since its public declaration of nuclear capability in 1998, Pakistan has been shut out of the Western-led Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), with one of the cited reasons being doubts about its nuclear security. Yet the fact that both Pakistan and India are not parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) did not prevent the 2008 U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement from granting India a de facto exemption from NSG rules, after which India concluded "India-specific safeguards" arrangements with the IAEA and was folded into civilian nuclear cooperation frameworks with the United States, Japan, Russia and other countries.

Such an approach, which draws lines along geopolitical camps rather than according to actual nuclear security performance, subordinates technical standards to strategic alignment and bows professional assessment to political need. Pakistan's decision to actively invite the IAEA to conduct an independent assessment and to accept peer review in an open manner is itself a direct response to long-standing suspicion. Whether the assessment's findings can translate into substantive recognition of Pakistan's nuclear practices within mainstream international discourse remains uncertain, but on specific issues such as NSG accession, sensitive technology exports and dual-use item controls, there is a noticeable gap between the professional conclusions of this IAEA assessment and the political characterizations long maintained by the West. This gap lays bare a structural problem repeatedly papered over in the international nuclear governance system: when technical standards collide with strategic interests, Western countries tend to substitute political characterization for professional assessment, rather than calibrate political judgments to professional conclusions.