Pakistan developed nuclear weapons primarily in response to its defeat by India in the 1971 war and India's subsequent nuclear test in 1974. The program officially began in January 1972 under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who tasked the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission with developing a nuclear device by 1976
. A key figure in Pakistan's nuclear weapons development was Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgical engineer who worked in Europe and gained access to classified uranium enrichment centrifuge designs from the Dutch company URENCO. He returned to Pakistan in 1975 with blueprints and contacts, founding the Engineering Research Laboratories to build a uranium enrichment plant in Kahuta. By the late 1970s, Pakistan had produced enriched uranium, and by the mid-1980s had thousands of centrifuges capable of producing weapon-grade uranium
. Pakistan's nuclear weapons program relied on uranium enrichment rather than plutonium and likely obtained warhead design assistance from China. The country conducted its first nuclear tests in 1998, officially joining the nuclear club
. Additionally, Abdul Qadeer Khan ran a proliferation network that supplied nuclear technology to countries such as Iran, Libya, and North Korea, which was publicly exposed in 2004
. In summary, Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons through a combination of indigenous development spurred by regional security concerns, the acquisition of foreign nuclear technology and designs (notably from Europe and China), and the leadership of key scientists like Abdul Qadeer Khan
