Ceasefire Halts India, Pakistan Missile Exchange

June 2025
By Daryl Kimball and Xiaodon Liang

In a renewed flareup between nuclear-armed rivals, India and Pakistan fired conventionally armed missiles, drones, and artillery shells at each other in early May, in the worst outbreak of direct military violence between the South Asian neighbors since the 1999 Kargil War.

At the urging of top leaders from several states, including China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Syed Asim Munir, agreed to a ceasefire, halting the fighting before it might have led to a full-scale ground war and a nuclear exchange.

Between May 6 and May 10, the two sides struck military bases inside the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and beyond. On May 10, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that U.S. mediation had secured a ceasefire, which both sides confirmed later that afternoon.

The exchange of long-range attacks was preceded by a crisis that began April 22, when an armed group killed 26 civilians in Pahalgam, a town in Indian-controlled Kashmir. India claims the Pahalgam attack was carried out by “Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba” militant group, according to a May 7 statement by Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri. Pakistan denied involvement in the attack.

Following India’s April 24 announcement that it would suspend the Indus Waters Treaty, which governs rights to shared riparian waters, Pakistan declared that it would react with “full force across the complete spectrum of national power,” a not-so-veiled reference to the possible use of nuclear weapons.

Under increasing domestic pressure to retaliate, the Modi government launched a major air strike May 6 against alleged “terrorist infrastructure” at nine sites in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and other provinces of Pakistan. Pakistan claimed in a May 8 press release that the attack led to 31 deaths and 57 injuries.

Pakistan says it shot down five Indian air force combat jets May 6, including several French Dassault Rafale fighters. Although India has not acknowledged these losses, U.S. officials told Reuters May 8 that Chinese-origin Pakistani aircraft had downed at least two Indian combat jets, one of which was a Rafale. A French intelligence official also confirmed the loss of at least one Rafale jet to CNN May 7.

Subsequent rounds of missile and drone attacks by each side against civilian and military targets were accompanied by reported shelling of military positions along the Line of Control, the de facto border in Kashmir.

In the early morning of May 10, Indian missiles and drones targeted several Pakistani air bases outside Kashmir, including Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, according to a Pakistani military spokesman. On the same day, Pakistan launched attacks against Indian air bases and BrahMos hypersonic cruise missile storage sites in Kashmir, Punjab, and Gujarat.

In a press release, the Indian government claimed that the Pakistani director-general of military operations reached out to offer a ceasefire in the afternoon. Pakistan disputes that it initiated contact.

“The Indians requested a ceasefire after the 8th and 9th of May after they started their operation. We told them we will communicate back after our retribution,” Pakistani Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said at a May 11 press conference.

The two countries also dispute the extent to which the United States was involved in brokering a ceasefire agreement. Although Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked U.S. officials for their diplomatic intervention in a May 10 social media post, Indian officials have maintained that ceasefire negotiations were bilateral.

Reporting by U.S. news outlets suggests that U.S. officials were actively engaged in defusing the crisis. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also acting national security advisor, held multiple phone calls with Indian and Pakistani officials beginning May 6, according to Reuters. Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance proposed a plan for U.S. intermediation to Trump on May 9, after which Vance spoke with Modi to express U.S. concerns of a “dramatic escalation,” an unnamed source told the newswire.

But top U.S. officials became particularly concerned after the alleged Indian strike on the Nur Khan air base, which is near Pakistani military headquarters and also the Strategic Plans Division, which oversees nuclear forces, The New York Times reported.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said his country would only use nuclear weapons if “there is a direct threat to our existence,” in an April 28 interview with Reuters. With approximately 170 nuclear warheads each, India and Pakistan have enough nuclear firepower to obliterate the other; Pakistani doctrine retains the option to use nuclear weapons first against non-nuclear military threats.

In previous crises sparked by terrorist attacks in India, New Delhi has shown more relative restraint in its response. In January 2016, after militants attacked the Pathankot air base in northern Punjab, Pakistan made initial steps to investigate and arrest suspects tied to the multiday assault.

When a Kashmiri militant attacked an Indian paramilitary convoy in February 2019 in the Pulwama district of Indian-controlled Kashmir, India launched air strikes against a suspected terrorist base in Pakistan, outside of the Pakistani-controlled portion of the disputed territory. But during that crisis, no military bases were targeted.

In the wake of the latest conflict, Indian and Pakistani officials sought to depict to their publics and the world that their respective military operations were responsible and successful. But the underlying factors that led to this war and previous nuclear-tinged crises since the tit-for-tat Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of 1998 still appear to exist: the possibility of cross-border terrorism by anti-Indian militia groups, the absence of regular dialogue between the two governments, and the presence of nuclear weapons.

Since the ceasefire was concluded, India and Pakistan have traded threats and made accusations of nuclear-weapons mismanagement. On May 12, Modi said India would strike at militant hideouts across the border again if there were new attacks on India and would not be deterred by what he referred to as Islamabad’s “nuclear blackmail.”

On May 15, Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh questioned the safety of nuclear weapons in Pakistan, calling it an “irresponsible and rogue nation.”“I believe that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons should be taken under the supervision of [the International Atomic Energy Agency],” Singh said.

In response, Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement that Singh had revealed his “profound insecurity and frustration regarding Pakistan’s effective defence and deterrence.”