Pakistan will lose any conventional war with India, says former CIA officer John Kiriakou

John Kiriakou

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou has said that Pakistan must realise there is “nothing positive” for it in engaging in conflict with India, asserting that Islamabad would “lose any conventional war” against New Delhi.

Kiriakou, who served in the CIA for 15 years and headed the agency’s counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, spoke to news agency ANI and said that during his tenure, he was told informally that the Pentagon once had control over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, though Islamabad has long denied it.

He said that when he was stationed in Pakistan in 2002, he was told unofficially that the Pentagon controlled the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. "That Musharraf had turned control over to the United States... But the Pakistanis in the intervening years… have come to say that is absolutely not true. The United States has nothing to do with the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, that Pakistani generals are the ones who control it,” he said.

When asked if this information was ever shared with India, Kiriakou responded, “I doubt that the Americans ever told India that the control of Pakistani nukes also lies with the US because of the vociferousness with which the Pakistanis have publicly maintained that they control their own nuclear weapons. But I can tell you definitively that the State Department was telling both sides, if you're gonna fight, fight. Keep it short and keep it non-nuclear. If nuclear weapons are introduced, the whole world is going to change. And so I think there was restraint on both sides.”

He further added, “Nothing, literally nothing good will come of an actual war between India and Pakistan because the Pakistanis will lose. It's as simple as that. They'll lose. And I'm not talking about nuclear weapons — I'm talking just about a conventional war. And so there is no benefit to constantly provoking Indians.”

Kiriakou also discussed Abdul Qadeer Khan (AQ Khan), the Pakistani nuclear scientist infamous for his role in nuclear smuggling, saying that the U.S. could have eliminated him had it chosen to follow an Israeli-style approach.

“If we had taken the Israeli approach, we would have just killed him. He was easy enough to find. We knew where he lived. We knew how he spent his day. But he also had the support of the Saudi government. And the Saudis came to us and said 'please leave him alone. We like AQ Khan. We're working with AQ Khan. We're close to the Pakistanis... Just leave him alone'. This was a mistake that the US government made, not confronting AQ Khan head on...,” he said.

Kiriakou’s comments come as India maintains that it will not tolerate nuclear blackmail by Pakistan and will respond decisively to any terror attack. Over the years, India has demonstrated military resolve through surgical strikes across the Line of Control in 2016, the Balakot airstrikes in 2019, and Operation Sindoor in May 2025, when it targeted terror infrastructure in Pakistan and PoJK following the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people.

Reflecting on his CIA career, Kiriakou said he spent the first half in intelligence analysis and the second half in counterterrorism operations. He gained prominence in 2007 after publicly exposing the CIA’s torture program, later serving 23 months in prison for his disclosures.

(With ANI inputs)