Pakistan's ICBM Shadow: Who Is the Real Target?

If your missiles can already reach every city in India, why build one that can hit Washington?

The Warning From the Intelligence Chair

In testimony before the US Senate, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, named Pakistan alongside China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran as states developing missile delivery systems capable of threatening the US homeland. Her specific concern: Pakistan may be moving toward intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability — weapons that, by definition, can strike targets more than 5,500 kilometers away.

She offered no timelines, no confirmed locations, no operational status. But the framing was pointed. The US intelligence community now assesses that the number of missiles threatening the American homeland could rise from more than 3,000 today to more than 16,000 by 2035. Pakistan, in this telling, is part of that expanding threat landscape.

The question that follows is as strategically important as it is geographically obvious: Pakistan's nuclear doctrine has always been India-centric. So what exactly is going on?

What the Evidence Actually Shows

Pakistan's longest-range tested missile is the Shaheen-III, a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) with a range of 2,750 kilometers. According to Hans Kristensen and colleagues writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that range is sufficient to cover all of mainland India from most launch positions in Pakistan south of Islamabad.

The Shaheen-III's design logic is revealing. Analysts believe it was engineered specifically to reach India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands — a remote archipelago that India could develop as a strategic base for its own weapons systems. To hit those islands, however, Pakistan would need to launch from its easternmost territory, close to the Indian border. In other words, even Pakistan's most capable tested missile remains oriented toward the full spectrum of Indian targets, including outlying positions.

SIPRI estimates Pakistan's nuclear arsenal at approximately 170 warheads as of January 2025, with a nascent nuclear triad — aircraft, land-based ballistic and cruise missiles, and sea-launched cruise missiles — under continued development.

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So where does ICBM capability fit in? Timothy Wright of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) assessed in early 2025 that the evidence is suggestive but not conclusive. The US has sanctioned Pakistan's National Defence Complex and Chinese suppliers linked to composite materials, filament-winding machines, and inspection systems associated with large solid-rocket motors. Satellite imagery shows a new, larger horizontal motor test stand built at Attock between 2021 and late 2023 — infrastructure consistent with testing bigger rocket motors. What those motors are ultimately for remains an open question.

The Iran Strike Changed the Calculation

To understand why Pakistan might be looking beyond India, it helps to trace what changed in the regional security environment.

In June 2025, the United States struck Iran's nuclear facilities. For Pakistan's strategic planners, the message was hard to ignore: a state's nuclear program is not, in itself, a guarantee against American military action. Marcus Andreopoulos, writing for the Royal Society of Asian Affairs, argues that the Iran strikes heightened nuclear anxieties in Islamabad and could be accelerating Pakistan's long-range missile ambitions.

The historical backdrop adds texture. Chilamkuri Mohan of the National University of Singapore notes that during the US War in Afghanistan, Washington quietly tolerated Pakistan's nuclear proliferation activities because Islamabad was an indispensable counterterrorism partner. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 removed that implicit bargain. Pakistan can no longer assume it will receive the same diplomatic cover it once enjoyed.

China's role complicates the picture further. Beijing has long supported Pakistan's missile and nuclear programs, and that dependence is deepening. But as Andreopoulos points out, Pakistan's growing reliance on China raises real questions about its strategic autonomy at a moment when US-China tensions are intensifying. A more transactional American posture toward Pakistan may, paradoxically, reduce Washington's leverage to constrain Islamabad's missile ambitions.

Nuclear Signaling as a Third-Party Game

There is a subtler interpretation worth considering. Siddhant Kishore, writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, argues that Pakistan's nuclear signaling has never been purely about deterring India. Instead, it functions as a tool of crisis manipulation — designed to create the perception of imminent nuclear escalation, thereby drawing the United States in as a restraining force.

Historically, American intervention in South Asian crises has tended to pressure India into restraint, offsetting Pakistan's conventional military disadvantage. In this framework, the deliberate cultivation of nuclear ambiguity — including, perhaps, the suggestion of ICBM development — serves a strategic purpose that has less to do with actual warfighting capability and more to do with keeping Washington engaged and attentive.

If that analysis holds, then Gabbard's Senate testimony may itself be part of the dynamic Pakistan is trying to engineer: a signal received, amplified, and now shaping American strategic attention.

None of this is to say Pakistan's ICBM ambitions are purely performative. The infrastructure investments are real. The sanctions are real. The test stand at Attock is real. Whether they add up to a genuine strategic pivot — from India-centric deterrence toward hedging against US power — is the question analysts are now wrestling with.