TRUMP AND THE IRANIAN PROBLEM
07.05.2026TRUMP AND THE IRANIAN PROBLEM
I was a Staff Reporter at the daily Morning News, Karachi, Pakistan, for about 12 years in the 1980’s.I had worked as a Stringer Sports Reporter, part time, for the newspaper and then was apprenticed to the Sports Editor,HMS Baig, before I joined them.I was not content there and switched to the City Desk. The City Editor Iqbal Mirza appreciated my work and I was happy with my ‘beats’. The work was meaningful
Some of the things I remember were my in- depth reports on the pharmaceutical companies dumping banned drugs in the country. This led to the government banning Clioquinol. The multinational company stopped its sale.
Then there were a series of reports with Latafat Ali Siddiqui on the sale of marijuana and other narcotics in the city. Other newspapers picked it up. The drugs were not available in the city for some time.
I remember being at St. Patrick’s High School one evening talking to the priests I knew there, when there was a loud blast some 500 meters away. It was at Empress Market in the center of the city. I ran towards the site as fast as I could and when I got there… I went back to the newspaper office and wrote my report. I would later get the All Pakistan Newspaper Society (APNS) Best Reporter Award for that report and also two others. At an APNS ceremony I received the award from the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto.
There are other memories which I have put away these last 20 plus years in Rome. There were visits with other journalists to Kathmandu on PIA’s First Flight there, a helicopter visit to the site of a major train accident, the visit to the Mangla Dam, seeing a meteorological rocket being fired at the SUPARCO center.
What is important, these days, with President Donald Trump’s statements on Iran having a nuclear bomb, is when I was at the auditorium of the University of Karachi and the speaker was the scientist considered the Father of the country’s nuclear program. He admitted that the country had the capability to make the atomic bomb. I reported it and the News Desk put the report on the front page.
The country would then take pride in having a nuclear weapon. There were pictures and props at the railway stations, showing the Kahuta mountains.
When there was tension with India, the President of Pakistan, announced that Pakistan’s nuclear arms will be moved close to the Indian border.
Then probably under pressure from the USA the Pakistani nuclear scientist would admit publicly that nuclear secrets were shared with Iran. It was also reported in the newspapers that the Iranian President said that there would be a nuclear umbrella for Islamic countries. This was before Obama assisted Iran.
So Iran should have had enough time to develop a nuclear weapon.
There were two visits to Medugorje from Karachi which changed my life. Our Lady changed my heart completely. I no more was interested in journalism. I wanted to be a priest or Catholic religious in some way.I just wanted to stay with Her and Jesus, to stay with God in silence.
Bishop Anthony Lobo, the bishop of Islamabad-Rawalpindi, sent me to Rome.
These 20 plus- years in Rome have been a time of peace. I have lost touch with Pakistan. I do not read the newspapers. I do not use the phone and have been following an eremitical religious life in solitude.
Now I find- the world, ‘la vita mondana’, is once again imposing itself on me and I want to stay with the peace I found in Medugorje.
-Lionel Andrades
Rome