Rising in Asia, a nuclear storm

With its energy resources, trading partners and diasporas all at threat from the nuclear storm rising across Asia, New Delhi ought to be making the case for restraint as loudly as it can

Inside an unmarked office located above a mother-and-child store on Dubai’s Crescent Drive, senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer Brigadier Mohammad Eslami sat down for a meeting he knew could shape the fate of his besieged nation. The men across the table from his delegation, German engineer Heinz Mebus and Sri Lankan businessmen Mohamed Farouq and Buhary Syed Ali Tahir — men who held the nuclear djinn.

Brigadier Eslami left the meeting with a one-page, handwritten note, authored by the representatives of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons czar AQ Khan, outlining a five-phase plan to develop nuclear weapons capacity. He had firm offers for centrifuges