The Imran Khan request
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Discussing Pakistani political instability in 2025, John Kiriakou gave Imran Khan as the case in point, a former prime minister in jail and still, he says, wildly popular.

The warning

The first part of the account concerns Khan's time in office. "He told us when he was still the prime minister, he said, listen, I've got this political situation here domestically, I'm going to start blaming you for everything."

The American response, as Kiriakou renders it, was unbothered: "and the ambassador laughed and said, we get blamed for everything anyway so we don't care."

What followed was the promised campaign, "so everything that happened, it was the United States' fault, and it was the US, they turned their backs on us, and the US did this and the US did that."

Kiriakou's punchline is the outcome: "and then they arrested him anyway."

The request

After the arrest, Khan "got a message out to the US government saying, can you help me get out of this?"

The route chosen was personal rather than diplomatic. "And we went to Jemima Goldsmith, his ex-wife. And she went to Pakistan and asked them if they would release him, and they said no."

Kiriakou does not say who "we" refers to, or when the approach was made, and does not describe what was offered.

What he takes from it

The episode functions in his telling as evidence for a general proposition about Pakistani politics: that anti-Americanism is often a domestic instrument rather than a policy, deployed knowingly and even announced in advance to the people it is aimed at, and that it does not protect the politician who deploys it.

It also illustrates the limits of American leverage. On Kiriakou's account the United States was willing to make an approach on Khan's behalf, chose the only channel plausibly available to it, and was refused.

He frames both parts inside the same worry he raises about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, that political disagreement there has a habit of spilling into the streets, with deaths at demonstrations, attacks on political figures and assassinations.

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Imran Khan
- The Pentagon and the Pakistani arsenal
- ISI
- Pakistani corruption and democracy
