America’s double standard on nuclear Islamism

By any reasonable strategic measure, the divergent nature of U.S. policy toward Iran and Pakistan defies logic.

Both are Islamic republics. Both are authoritarian in structure. Both have had links to transnational terrorist networks. And both have long had fraught relationships with Washington.

Yet one is relentlessly sanctioned, threatened and even denied civilian nuclear rights under international safeguards. The other has been indulged, armed and repeatedly excused, even as it built nuclear weapons while fostering terrorist proxies.

In fact, Washington treats one as an unacceptable nuclear risk while overlooking the other’s expanding nuclear arsenal.

In Western political discourse, “Islamic Republic” has become shorthand for Iran. But that is historically inaccurate. The first Islamic republic of the postcolonial era was Pakistan, which adopted the title in 1956, more than two decades before Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

The label, in other words, does not explain Washington’s choices. It only exposes its inconsistency.

Consider Iran first. For decades, Washington has treated Tehran’s nuclear ambitions as an existential threat. President Trump scrapped the 2015 Obama-era nuclear deal despite Iran’s verified compliance. Under that agreement, Tehran shipped out most of its enriched uranium, capped enrichment levels and accepted intrusive international inspections.

Yet today, the U.S. insists that Iran must go further — that it must not merely agree never to develop nuclear weapons but abandon uranium enrichment altogether, even under stringent international monitoring.

The demand for zero enrichment goes beyond the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which explicitly guarantees non-nuclear states the “inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear energy, including enrichment. This explains why non-nuclear states like Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Brazil operate active enrichment programs,........

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