that islamist bomb

Maybe not where you think:

After extensive interviews with Pakistani intelligence sources, government officials and terrorist "sympathizers", he concluded that, since the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda has undergone a process of "Pakistanization." Not only are Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri believed to be in northern Pakistan, but they are still deeply involved in planning global terrorist attacks. In fact, most post-9/11 Al-Qaeda plots can be linked to the organization’s Pakistani branch.

Al-Qaeda's presence is well-established in Pakistan. The provinces of North and South Waziristan, in northwest Pakistan, are home to some of Al-Qaeda's training facilities. Powerful clerics in these rugged areas shelter Al-Qaeda's top leadership. Even before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan provided some of Al-Qaeda's most capable recruits. More disturbingly, Al-Qaeda has links to Jamiat i Islami, a large, well-established Pakistani Islamist political party. During his talk, Debat noted that "Al-Qaeda is making inroads into the senior levels of the political class."

No debate here over the nuclear timeline. Pakistan already has nukes along with the missiles to deliver them. It also makes a nonsense of the idea that you can just throw Iran in with al-Qaeda into one undifferentiated category marked Islamism. the Iranians would be as freaked out as everybody else if radical sunnis ever got their mitts on Pakistan's nuclear capability. It may have something to do with Tehran's own search for a deterrent on those lines.

This follows last week's deal effectively re-purposing Waziristan as Talibanistan minor - about which, incidentally, the British government seems to have no opinion at all as far as I can tell.