Similarly this year, the general weathered another storm: the public humiliation of a great national hero, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
That seems even more urgent after the uncovering of the nuclear Wal-Mart run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, once Pakistan's chief weapons scientist.
The North Koreans started to obtain Chinese-Pakistani enrichment technology in the early 1990s from the black-market ring headed by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan.
In the 1980s, some of Pakistan's nuclear labs were controlled by Abdul Qadeer Khan considered responsible for leaking technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
Last week, nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan -- the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program -- admitted he sent nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
But inspectors have more questions, especially about potentially militarily useful help Iran received in the past, including from the network run by Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan.
They attribute this largely to the failings of Iran's less-advanced centrifuges, which are based on a P-1 design originally provided by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
WSJ: North Korea Nuclear Find Raises Fears It Will Share With Iran
Like Libya, which owned up to a once-secret weapons programme, Iran and North Korea got their start in the uranium-enrichment business from the nuclear black market run by Pakistan's disgraced Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Iran's explanation is that the nuclear smuggling network run by Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan had sent it this document in 1987, along with other documentation on centrifuges Iran had received, but that Iran had not asked for it.
Though North Korea openly admits making nuclear weapons using plutonium, it has still not come clean about its pursuit of the uranium route to the bomb, even though Pakistan's former chief nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has reportedly said he sold Mr Kim's regime some uranium-linked nuclear secrets.
But enlisting countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE would have huge symbolic and political effect especially if it included Dubai, which normally does a roaring trade with Iran and was the hub of the illicit nuclear network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, who helped Iran and others with their secret nuclear work.
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