'India needs to cut Pakistan's jugular vein': Former Pentagon official compares Pakistan Army chief to Osama Bin Laden

Coming down heavily on Pakistan and its Army chief General Asim Munir, who recently described Kashmir as his country's "jugular vein", former Pentagon official and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, claimed that the speech by the Army chief " seemed to green-light terror."

In the wake of the dreaded Pahalgam terror attack which left 26 people dead, many had pointed to General Asim Munir's ‘provocative’ statement during a conclave of Overseas Pakistanis as one of the possible triggers for the attack.

"Asim Munir said that Kashmir is the jugular vein. What India now needs to do is to cut Pakistan's jugular. There is no ifs or buts. There are no shortcuts anymore," Rubin said, reacting to a question if the statement by the Pakistan Army chief may have triggered the attack.

We know that Pakistan is home to many terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, he said, adding that because of a lack of concerted counter-terror action, the terror problem has now been expanded to Bangladesh as well.

"But when we look at what happened, how do we know it's Pakistan? The intelligence will come in over the next few days. I am sure that there is going to be some signals intelligence," he said.

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"We know, based on geography, based on precedent, and based on an ideological swamp, that it is Pakistan's ISI, that they are logistically and ideologically the only country that is the suspect right now," he added.

According to him, the only reaction that the US should take is a formal designation of Pakistan as a state sponsor of terror and the designation of Asim Munir as a terrorist. "The only difference between Osama Bin Laden and Asim Munir is that Laden lived in a cave and Munir lives in a palace, but beyond that, the two are the same, and their end should also be the same."

He said although one can pretend that Pakistan isn't a terror sponsor, it remains a terror sponsor how much anyone tries to normalise it.

Defence