Pentagon officials are watching out for Pakistan's next moves after US froze security aid payments to Islamabad, saying it is not doing enough to target Haqqani network bases on its soil, according to AFP’s report.
 
The Trump administration's decision to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from its "coalition support funds" has riled Pakistan, with some there calling for retaliatory measures that might hamper America's war efforts in neighboring Afghanistan.
 
Though US officials insisted they'd seen no evidence Islamabad was planning such a move, it has happened before.
 
In 2011, Pakistan closed its border to NATO supplies following a series of incidents that brought relations between the US and Pakistan to all-time lows.
 
These incidents included a botched American air raid and the killing of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, who was living in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
 
But Washington has only just begun to work through its new plan to suspend up to roughly $2 billion in US security assistance, announced on Thursday.
 
It came days after US President Donald Trump tweeted that Pakistan had rewarded past US aid with “nothing but lies and deceit.”
 
The senior Trump administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington hoped that the aid suspension would be enough to communicate its concern to Islamabad, Reuters reported. 
 
But the official cautioned that the freeze was also not the only tool that America had to pressure the country — suggesting it might resort to other measures if needed.
 
“We are considering many different things, not just the (financial) assistance issue,” the official said. “We are also looking at Pakistan’s potential response ... and we are looking at ways to deal with that and to mitigate the risks to the relationship.”
 
The official declined to detail what steps were under consideration, including whether that might include possible unilateral US military action against militants in Pakistan, the report said.
 
The United States has long blamed the militant safe havens in Pakistan for prolonging the war in Afghanistan, giving insurgents, including from the Haqqani network, a base to plot attacks and rebuild its forces.
 
“We believe we owe it to the Americans in harms’ way in Afghanistan. We simply can’t ignore the sanctuaries if we are going to make progress in Afghanistan,” the official said.
 
But Pakistan has rejected the claims.