The author reads Pakistan’s “nuclear flashpoint” and IWT language—from Imran Khan at the UN to Bilawal’s “water or blood,” ISPR’s “stop your breath,” and Asim Munir’s “10 missiles”—as threat, not concern, after India put the treaty in abeyance following the April 2025 tourist killings.

He cites Nishant Sirohi that “abeyance” is a pause in joint forums, not a cutoff of allocated western-river flows, and Davendra Sharma that 1950s design rules freeze modern dams and sediment work (e.g. Tulbul).

Pakistan’s scarcity is blamed on few reservoirs versus India’s thousands and high defence spend, not Indian theft; New Delhi should say it is using its IWT share, demand “goodwill” against cross-border terror, and seek a less 80/20 basin split.

During his 2020 United Nations General Assembly address, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Imran Khan had mentioned that “There will be no durable peace and stability in South Asia until the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is resolved on the basis of international legitimacy.” 

Though Khan took the high moral ground by invoking the regional peace and stability factor, he unashamedly exposed Pakistan’s proclivity for using force to resolve issues by reminding the audience that “Kashmir has been rightly described as a nuclear flashpoint.” His utterance rekindled bitter memories of the Pakistan army led tribal invasion of Kashmir in 1947, another attempt in 1965, and the Kargil intrusions of 1999.

While India has enunciated its ‘no first use’ nuclear policy, Pakistan hasn’t. Hence, it doesn’t require rocket science to discern as to who would be responsible for initiating a nuclear conflagration on the Kashmir issue. The “nuclear flashpoint” worry frequently expressed by Islamabad is in effect a brazen threat disguised as a deep concern and needs to be viewed as such by the international community.

With New Delhi holding the Indus Water Treaty [IWT] in abeyance after the brutal targeted killing of tourists belonging to a particular community by Pakistan sponsored terrorists in April 2025, Pakistan has once again issued a host of threats ranging from the macabre to downright bizarre.  

Pakistan Peoples’ Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari declared that “The Indus is ours and will remain ours – either our water will flow through it, or their [India’s] blood.” More recently, he has upgraded his threat to nuclear level by saying, “One of the key aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine is that attempts to strangle the country’s economy or restrict its waterways fall among the rare scenarios that Pakistan has said could trigger a nuclear response.”

Director General [DG] of Pakistan army’s media wing Inter-Services Public Relations [ISPR] Lt G Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said “If you block our water, we will stop your breath,” a repeat of Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] co-founder Hafiz Saeed’s........

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