Operation Sindoor: Realities, Rhetoric, Responses and After-Effects
Rahul Singh
India’s strike on nine terror hubs in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir echoed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statements of March 5, 2019, in Ahmedabad and July 2, 2024, in parliament: “We will hit you inside your house.” His warning that the current ceasefire is only temporary has raised the possibility that the next round of conflict could be more escalatory. Equally significant is the Indian military’s demonstrated ability to strike deep into Pakistan’s territory, targeting key military assets.
This was evident in the missile and drone attacks on the Chaklala air base, Rahimyar Khan air base, Sukkur air base and radar, Sargodha air base, Bholari air base, Jacobabad air base and hangar, UAV Complex in Murid, Chunian air defence radar, Pasrur air defence radar, Arifwala air defence radar, and radar facilities in Lahore and Gujranwala. Pakistan’s Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations acknowledged: “Yes, the damage has occurred to the infrastructure, and such damages in military conflicts, wars are supposed to be taken and absorbed.”
The clear warning from Modi that India will not yield to nuclear blackmail in its resolve to hit terror hubs in Pakistan is no longer empty rhetoric, but an existential reality.
But the Indian armed forces appear to have underestimated the Pakistan Air Force’s strengths and its capacity to target and strike Indian Air Force jets from deep within Pakistan’s airspace. India was also surprised by the scale and intensity of Pakistani drone and UAV attacks on military facilities in Avantipora, Srinagar, Jammu, Pathankot, Amritsar, Kapurthala, Nal, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Adampur, Bathinda, Chandigarh, Phalodi, Uttarlai, Bhuj and Thoise. These attacks were acknowledged in briefings by the Ministry of External Affairs on May 8, 2025, and the Director General of Military Operations on May 11, 2025.
Air Marshal Bharti referred to the scale of these attacks, referring to “mass and relentless raids by Pakistani UAVs and drones on our cities… targeting our airfields and some very, very important logistic installations.”
The hand of Trump
Prime Minister Modi has consistently asserted that the world is paying attention to India. On October 24, 2024, he declared that the world was listening to India “with rapt attention and seriousness.” In a speech in Bhubaneswar on January 9, 2025, he said, “Today the world listens attentively to India.” Referring to India’s May 7 missile strikes on nine terror sites in Pakistan and POK, he added, “Many terrorist leaders were roaming freely in Pakistan for the last two and a half to three decades.” Pakistan, however, appears to have pushed back against these claims.
While India was reeling from the brutality of the April 22 Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan was cleverly courting World Liberty Financial Inc. (WLFI), controlled by US president Trump and his children, to facilitate an MoU with the Pakistan Crypto Council, which eventually was signed on April 28.
Earlier, in his March 5, 2025, State of the Union address, Trump officially praised Pakistan for its role in combating terrorism.
Historic moment: WLFI has officially signed an MOU with Pakistan 🇵🇰x🦅
It was an incredible experience meeting with the Pakistan Crypto Council and the leaders shaping the future of crypto.
We’re proud to be building with Pakistan to drive innovation forward.
This is just the… pic.twitter.com/SY1OB1CALu
— WLFI (@worldlibertyfi) April 28, 2025
While the Indian government has repeatedly accused Pakistan of diverting international aid toward terror activities, Trump approved nearly $400 million to support Pakistan’s F-16 fighter jets for counterterrorism operations. And while New Delhi has long sought to de-hyphenate India from Pakistan diplomatically, Trump did the exact opposite: “I am going to increase trade, substantially, with both of these great nations… Pakistan has some excellent people and some really good, great leader. And India is my friend—Modi, he is a great guy and I called them both.”
While India opposed an IMF loan to Pakistan, the US ensured unanimous approval by its executive board for an additional $1 billion in aid. The Asian Development Bank also granted Pakistan an $800 million loan.
Most significantly, while India’s external affairs minister has weakly contended that the “agreement and understanding for a cessation of firing and military action… was something that we negotiated directly between the militaries of the two countries,” Trump publicly declared that the cease-fire was “mediated by the United States.” Curiously, this claim of Trump's mediation was later echoed by Yuri Ushakov, a senior aide to Russian president Vladimir V. Putin, who stated that Putin and Trump had discussed the conflict, which had been halted with the personal involvement of President Trump.
India suffered the most substantive diplomatic setback when Pakistan was appointed to lead the United Nations Security Council Committee established under Resolution 1988 (2011), which oversees sanctions implementation against the Taliban. To make matters worse, Pakistan was also named vice chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, which monitors the implementation of Resolution 1373 (2001), a cornerstone of the UN’s global counterterrorism framework. These appointments likely would not have been possible without the support of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
The icing on the cake in the newfound status of Pakistan as a bulwark against terrorism may come if Pakistan manages a UN-backed investigation on foreign support to terrorism in Balochistan.
Clearly, not only does Trump and the West seriously doubt India’s narrative that Pakistan is the epicentre of terrorism and is responsible for the Pahalgam massacre, it has actually rewarded Pakistan for it’s proclaimed fight against terrorism. In the context of Operation Sindoor and India’s narrative against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, the maximum damage to the government of India’s narrative has been caused by the American administration and Modi's ‘dear friend’ Trump.
Trump does not want a war between India and Pakistan, not because it could escalate into a nuclear exchange, but because the net gainer of such a war would be China, which wants India to remain tied and hyphenated with Pakistan in a low intensity war, instead of posing an economic challenge to China in the forceable future. Trump wants India’s guns to be pointed towards China, which has long been seen as America’s foremost enemy.
The Trump administration also wants India to stop buying arms from Russia, and instead depend on the US. This was voiced by US Secretary of Treasury, who recently said: “There were certain things that the Indian government did that generally rubbed the United States the wrong way. For instance, they generally buy military gear from Russia. That’s a way to kind of get under the skin of America, if you go to buy your armaments from Russia. India is starting to move towards buying military equipment from the United States.”
Caution from Russia
Russia, like the rest of the world, has not blamed Pakistan for the Pahalgam attack. Nor has it supported India’s strike on terror bases in Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. What is however significant is that in the backdrop of Operation Sindoor, Russia has cautioned India against widening the scope of the intra-Quad cooperation. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said: “We spoke to our Indian friends back then and they told us that their interest in joining the Quad is exclusively of trade of economic nature and cooperation in other peaceful areas”. While it is understandable for China to warn India against trying to use the economic and trade framework of the Quad to conceal naval cooperation among Quad countries for the containment of China, it is alarming that such a warning should come from Lavrov. Referring to other Quad member’s naval exercises, Lavrov said: “They try to involve all the four countries into these exercises. And I’m sure that our Indian friends, they can see this provocation clearly."
Batting for China, Lavrov accused NATO of trying to lure India into “an anti-China intrigue”. Referring to this intrigue, he said: “I have no doubts that our Indian friends, and I say this on the basis of confidential conversations with them, obviously see this trend that can be actually deemed as a large provocation”. What is noticeable also is Lavrov promoting the relevance of the Russia-India-China format for addressing border tensions between China and India. He said the “time has come" to restart Russia-India-China or RIC meetings. Russia is indicating strongly to the Modi government that the normalisation of relations with China can be achieved through the RIC, and not through the US-backed path of containment, by widening the scope of the Quad.
Stuck between the US and the Russia-China Axis: The Cost of Technological Dependence
India is caught between the US's attempts to use it as a bulwark against China to fight America’s China war, and Russia’s unprecedented ‘no-limits' partnership with India’s long-term rival China, which is promoting Pakistan as a proxy. Putin’s attempt to wean India away from the Quad is an attempt to neutralise India’s role in the emerging Sino-US struggle for global primacy. This is why the Russian foreign minister warned India against succumbing to the lure of US sponsored “anti-China intrigue”. The Russian position is completely antithetical to that of the US.
We are not able to leverage our capacity to tilt the balance of power between US on one side and the Russia-China axis on the other because of our techno-military dependence on US and Russia, and because of our inadequate defence research and development capacity. We depend on both sides for our survival as a strong military power, and they use India’s technological dependence to restrict our strategic choices.
The US has not honoured the promise in the June 22, 2023 Joint Statement wherein: “Prime Minister Modi and President Biden hailed the landmark signing of an MoU between General Electric and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for the manufacture of GE F-414 jet engines in India, for the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Light Combat Aircraft Mk 2”. Even after two years not a single engine has been co-produced.
Instead, Trump has been pressurising India to purchase the outrageously priced F-35, without committing to regular supply/co-production of GE414 engines. This has forced the chairman and managing director of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is D.K. Sunil to respond to the widely reported February 2025 lament of our Air Chief on delays in the delivery of Tejas, thus: “As the engines start coming in our deliveries to the IAF will start”.
Russia, for its part, has obvious leverage because of our huge dependence on the country for the major component of our Air Force, Navy and Army, especially for our Brahmos missile batteries. It is leveraging this very dependence to pressurise India to buy the SU-57. We have demonstrated that we do not have the technological strength to fabricate a jet engine for Light Combat Aircraft even after more than 30 years of research on the Kaveri engine.
Also read: India's Inability to Produce Engines Makes Its Forces Vulnerable to Geopolitics and More
Politically Guided Compromises in Operation Sindoor
This has resulted in strategic compromise and diplomatic waffling. We could not inflict military damage on the Pakistan Army and ISI, the main backers of terrorist strikes in India, because Trump interceded on behalf of Pakistan to halt the war. Saying that the Pakistan DGMO called our DGMO to ask for a ceasefire is neither here nor there because three decisions – (a) to start the war by targeting terror camps, (b) not to target the Pakistani Army and ISI, and (c) to halt or accept ceasefire were all political ones and not calls made by our military.
This will be repeated in future conflicts too. Modi’s May 12, 2025, statement, “When Pakistan appealed and said that it will not indulge in any sort of terror activities or military audacity further, India considered it,” may have political traction in domestic audiences, but it has few takers among foreign governments.
Trump’s Temptation at Kananaskis
There is danger of more embarrassment for India and Modi in the June 15 G-7 Summit in Canada for which Modi has received a last-minute invite.
Let us be clear that the US Congress as well as a US federal court and the entire executive arm have been clearly told that Trump, Vance and Rubio mediated the ceasefire. For the Modi government to try to rubbish that is an affront to Trump, who could very well use the G-7 summit in Canada to set the record straight. In the message posted on X on May 10, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio specifically mentions Modi, national security adviser Ajit Doval and external affairs minister S. Jaishankar: "Over the past 48 hours, @VP Vance and I have engaged with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, including Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir, and National Security Advisors Ajit Doval and Asim Malik. I am pleased to announce the Governments of India and Pakistan have agreed to an immediate ceasefire and to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site. We commend Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif on their wisdom, prudence, and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace."
US mediation to secure the ceasefire was also mentioned by Jim Risch, chairman of United States Foreign Relations Committee, while hearing Rubio on the 2026 state department’s budget.
The Malaise of Rhetoric
As already mentioned, Modi’s May 12 statement – “Pakistan appealed and said that it will not indulge in any sort of terror activities or military audacity further” – has had negligible traction abroad. A reliable Pakistan specialist in India has warned against such complacency about roll over by Pakistan. He points out that: when India conducted five nuclear tests, Pakistan conducted six; Pakistan's retaliation to the bombing of nine terror sites in Pakistan was expected; the idea that Pakistan would roll over is hugely unrealistic; the military exchange on the whole has "been bit of a draw"; and that the window of conventional war under nuclear overhang will become smaller in the future.
What the conflict achieved for Pakistan, which is not good for India, is that it brought the military and political leadership together. While Modi government maintains that stopping the waters of the Jhelum, Chenab and Indus to Pakistan will bring the nation to its knees, it does appears that to maintain access to water “Pakistan will respond with whatever means it has at it’s disposal”.
Commenting on our addiction to rhetoric, career diplomat Jawed Ashraf in a recent interview to the Indian Express, put it rather mildly: “If we start believing that if we are hit by terrorism from Pakistan, the entire world will come down like a ton of bricks on Pakistan, then it is romanticism and naïveté… I think diplomacy relies a lot on rhetoric. The danger lies in believing rhetoric is reality!” While the Modi government has repeatedly said that the only issue to be discussed with Pakistan is POK and terrorism, it does appear that “it may be useful at some point to have some kind of back-channel with Pakistan to convey our resolve and to minimise the risk of surprises. Major powers do that.”
Military hyphenation
Referring to halt of hostilities on May 10, Modi said on May 12 that this was just a ceasefire. He said: “First, if there is a terrorist attack on India, a fitting reply will be given…Secondly, India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail…Thirdly, we will not differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism… During Operation Sindoor the world has again seen the ugly face of Pakistan, when top Pakistani army officers came to bid farewell to the slain terrorists. This is strong evidence of state-sponsored terrorism.” So basically, Modi is saying that the responsibility for any further terror attack on India will be laid on the door of the Pakistan government and military, and result in similar or greater response. This constitutes a permanent state of military tension and a conflict-waiting-to-happen situation between India and Pakistan.
Future conflicts with Pakistan will cement India’s hyphenation with Pakistan, who’s ability to inflict damage to our Air Force will help project it as a major military power in Asia after China and India. Not merely that. China will continue to use Pakistan to test the effectiveness of some of it’s military software and hardware. This includes the transfer of state-of-the-art Shenyang J35A to Pakistan, which has reportedly been flown by PAF pilots over Gilgit Baltistan. It’s deployment in the coming military conflicts with India will drag India further into the mud of hyphenation with Pakistan.
The South Asian 'theatre of conventional war under nuclear overhang’
The international arms bazaar now keenly awaits the outcome of next India-Pakistan jet, missile and drone match to determine strength, reliability and value of shares of players, like: AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Corporation which manufactures J10C; China Airborne Missile Academy (CAMA), the manufacturers of PL-15 & PL-15E missiles; AVIC Shenyang Aircraft, the makers of J35; Dassault Aviation, manufacturers of Rafale; Lockheed Martin, manufacturers of F-16 and of F35; Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau and Sukhoi Corporation, manufacturers of MiG-29 and SU-30 respectively; NPO Mashinostroyeniya, which holds the technology of Brahmos missiles; Asisguard, makers of Songar drones; Baykar and NASTP, makers of Byker YIHA III drones; and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) maker of Heron UAVs.
As Russia and Ukraine move closer to a peace agreement and even otherwise, India and Pakistan are shaping up to be the new gladiators in the brand new Asian theatre of conventional war under a nuclear overhang, to determine the efficacy of high-end weapons. That is the trap into which the Modi government could be walking into.
We can arrive at the following conclusions.
One, Pakistan’s official responses through its DG ISPR on May 11, through his interviews to BBC and Arab News do not indicate that Pakistan is deterred by India’s Operation Sindoor. Instead, there is a scent of defiance and celebration of Pakistan’s military resistance.
Two, Pakistan seems to have gained considerable international recognition for its orchestrated posture of distancing itself from terrorism, and it is not likely that it could be put back on the FATF grey list in the near future.
Three, while India has demonstrated its resolve and capacity to hit Pakistan terror bases and military infrastructure, it is likely that India will yield to international, especially US, pressure to halt future hostilities against Pakistan.
Four, while India has demonstrated that it will not yield to nuclear blackmail in targeting Pak terror infrastructure, it does appear that the decision not to target the Pakistan Army and ISI (which are the fountainheads of terror) during Operation Sindoor, despite Pakistan’s drone attacks on Indian airfields, was due to India’s deference to Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence. Similarly, the ubiquitous insistence both in the MEA and DGMO’s briefings from May 7 to 13, 2025, of India’s desire not to escalate was also in deference to Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence.
Five, the India-Pakistan hyphenation is a reality and has limited India-Pakistan conflict under the nuclear overhang. It could become a testbed for emerging military platforms and technologies.
Six, India’s technological dependence on US and Russia, be it the GE engines or the Brahmos missiles, has cramped India not only regarding our responses to Pakistan where we yielded to mediation, but also regarding our strategic responses to the wider confrontation between US and the China-Russia axis as was evident in Russia’s caution against our involvement in any military cooperation with the Quad.
Seven, despite the rhetoric that India will discuss only POK and terrorism with Pakistan, there will have to be a track two to address myriad issues including the opening up of airspaces, Kashmir, the Line of Control, and the Indus Waters Treaty.
Eight, there is realisation that India is up against a formidable Pakistan-China military nexus. The expectation that Pakistan will roll over is in the domain of fantasy.
Lastly, and regrettably, governments both in Pakistan and India seem to be drifting into rhetoric and could be caught in the vortex of popular expectations.
Rahul Singh is a former civil servant who retired from the ministry of defence.
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