IslamabadPakistan is US Central Command’s “central” Islamic State Khorasan partner, admiral says.
Admiral Bradford Cooper told the US Senate the partnership targeted individuals “with American blood on their hands.”
The US campaign against Iran, Operation Epic Fury, sits paused but not ended.
Sources: Dawn
WHO IS-K ACTUALLY IS
Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP, or IS-K) emerged in 2015 from defectors of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) in Orakzai and disaffected Afghan Taliban commanders. 'Khorasan' is the classical Islamic-era name for the region spanning eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Central Asia and northwest Pakistan — chosen for its eschatological resonance, not its modern borders.
THE ABBEY GATE LINEAGE
The August 2021 Kabul airport bombing that killed 13 US service members and ~170 Afghans was an IS-K operation. The bomber, Abdul Rahman al-Logari, had been held in Bagram's prison and walked free when the Taliban emptied it during the US withdrawal. Every subsequent US strike framed as 'IS-K leadership' traces back to that night's debt.
THE TALIBAN–IS-K WAR
The Afghan Taliban and IS-K are mortal enemies. IS-K considers the Taliban apostate for negotiating with the US in Doha and for running a nation-state rather than a borderless caliphate. Since 2021 the Taliban have killed or captured more IS-K operatives than the US did in twenty years — which is exactly why Washington now needs an intelligence channel into the country it just left.
WHY PAKISTAN, NOT THE TALIBAN
The US cannot openly partner with the Taliban government it refuses to recognize. Pakistan's ISI has historical penetration of every Pashtun militant network — including IS-K's recruitment pipelines in Bajaur and Khyber — and operates the only functional liaison Washington can use without granting Kabul legitimacy. The arrangement revives a Cold-War-era template: Pakistan as the cut-out for US operations next door.
OPERATION EPIC FURY
The 'paused but not ended' framing is doctrinally specific. US campaign nomenclature distinguishes terminated operations (archived) from suspended ones (assets retained, authorities preserved, restart on order). A paused Iran campaign means strike packages, ISR tasking, and legal findings remain live — the political off-ramp is reversible by a single executive decision.
THE PRICE OF THE PARTNERSHIP
Pakistan's CT cooperation has historically been transactional: IMF program flexibility, F-16 sustainment, and silence on internal political prosecutions. CENTCOM publicly naming Pakistan 'central' is itself a deliverable — it gives Islamabad a Washington-stamped counter-narrative against Indian, Afghan, and European critiques of its militant-tolerance record.