Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan sat down with Wajahat S. Kahn, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Pakistan Initiative, for an interview on June 18, 2023.

Khan, who was ousted from power in April 2022, revealed new details about why efforts to achieve a historic peace with India collapsed and spoke to the worries he heard his army chief express about the state of Pakistani military readiness relative to India. He claimed that the former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa told him “frequently” that the army was not equipped or prepared for a war with India.

He also lamented the steep decline of Pakistan’s economy and democracy and explained why he’s preparing himself for the possibility of being jailed or even assassinated.