India And Pakistan, Both Nuclear Powers, On The Brink Of War

India’s missile attack shows that managing an India-Pakistan crisis is easier said than done.

By Syed Ali Zia Jaffery, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

A day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged India and Pakistan to de-escalate tensions following the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, US Vice President JD Vance said the “hope here is that India responds to this terrorist attack in a way that doesn’t lead to a broader regional conflict.” Vance also said he hoped “that Pakistan, to the extent that they are responsible, cooperates with India to make sure that the terrorists sometimes operating in their territory are hunted down and dealt with.”

But on Tuesday, in what it code-named Operation Sindoor, India fired missiles at multiple sites in Pakistan, claiming that those sites were “terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed.” According to a report in The Guardian newspaper, no Pakistani military sites were targeted.

Before the missile attack, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave full operational freedom to the Indian military to avenge the Pahalgam attack, which killed 26 people in the portion of Kashmir controlled by India. In a statement, India’s armed forces claimed they had “demonstrated considerable restraint” in Tuesday’s missile attack, but Pakistan has vowed to give a befitting response to any Indian aggression. After India’s missile attack, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper cited Pakistani Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry as saying: “Let me say it unequivocally: Pakistan will respond to this at a time and place of its own choosing. This heinous provocation will not go unanswered.”

The Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir had not been quiet since the Pahalgam incident, with both sides trading fire every day since the start of the crisis. While both countries have been embroiled in similar nuclear-tinged crises in the past, the escalation of hostilities this time may be harder to control. There are three reasons why this might be the case.