India-Pakistan Fighting: What is the affect on the US, China and Iran?

India-Pakistan Fighting: What is the affect on the US, China and Iran?

Pakistan has said 31 civilians have been killed and dozens wounded by India’s strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. India said 13 people have been killed in cross-border attacks from Pakistan, including one soldier.

Addressing parliament, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Pakistan’s military shot down five Indian fighter jets during India’s assault.
    
India claims its attacks have hit "terror" training sites; Pakistan says mosques and civilians were struck, calling it an "act of war" and promising a robust response.
    
Pakistan’s National Security Committee said it has authorised the country’s armed forces to retaliate against India’s attacks, saying Pakistan reserves the right to respond "at a time, place, and manner of its choosing".
    
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has said Islamabad is looking to avoid an all-out war with India, but must be prepared for one.
    
World powers – including the UK, France, Germany, Iran, Turkiye, Qatar and the UAE – have urged both nuclear-armed nations to show restraint and return to diplomacy.
   
Iran has offered to mediate peace talks, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has already held separate discussions with both India and Pakistan over the past day.

India-Pakistan posturing for domestic gain, but risk of war looms - Analysis

Georgetown University assistant professor Uday Chandra has characterised the ongoing crisis as a performative “game of chicken” aimed at domestic audiences in India and Pakistan, with backchannel negotiations quietly persisting.

Chandra, while highlighting Pakistan’s pledge to see the conflict through to its “logical conclusion”, dismissed the likelihood of full-scale war.

He said unverified claims from Pakistan of downed Indian jets – fiercely contested by Delhi – exemplify the current “fog of war”. Chandra also stressed that civilian casualties have exposed India’s security lapses, intensifying political pressure on New Delhi.

Pakistan vows retaliation after India launches air strikes

Pakistan’s government has pledged to respond to India’s attack “at a time, place and manner of its choosing”.

The government also said that it would “avenge the loss of innocent Pakistani lives and blatant violation of its sovereignty” following India’s missile attacks that killed at least 31 and injured dozens.

India said 13 civilians have been killed and 43 wounded on the Indian side of the Line of Control dividing Indian- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, where heavy cross-border shelling and gunfire were reported.

India’s Union Minister proposes widening of strategic road in Kashmir

Jitendra Singh proposed the widening of the strategic Udhampur Dhar Road in India-administered Kashmir, saying the move would be in “the interest of border security and defence”.

“In the light of the current developments along the India- Pakistan border, Dr Jitendra Singh brought this issue to the notice of Indian Army as well as (Border Security Force) authorities, citing the security angle related to the widening of this road,” a news release from India’s Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions stated.

“This will also be a significant boost to border infrastructure and regional connectivity,” it added.

Reporting the proposal, India’s state-run Press Information Bureau said improving infrastructure in the area would provide “both civilian access and strategic military movement in a region that plays a pivotal role in national security”.

India-Pakistan tension a strategic benefit for China, puts US in ‘delicate position’: Analyst

Erin Hale

Alam Saleh, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at the Australian National University, said the escalation in tension between India and Pakistan again “underscores the fragility of regional stability in South Asia”.

Saleh told Al Jazeera that the clashes between India and Pakistan also have “broader geopolitical reverberations”, particularly for China’s geo-strategic positioning in the region.

“China stands to benefit strategically from sustained Indo-Pakistan tensions. As a close ally of Pakistan and a regional competitor to India, Beijing views Islamabad as a key counterweight to Indian influence,” Saleh said.

“Continued instability ties down Indian resources and attention, limiting its regional assertiveness and alignment with US Indo-Pacific objectives. China is thus likely to maintain and deepen its support for Pakistan, both diplomatically and militarily,” he said.

“The United States finds itself in a delicate position. As a strategic partner of India and a longtime, though complicated, security actor in Pakistan, Washington is constrained from fully siding with either party,” he added.

“Escalation threatens to undermine (the US’s) broader Indo-Pacific strategy and further complicate its waning influence in the region.”

Meta blocks Indian users from accessing Muslim news page on Instagram

Instagram’s parent company Meta has blocked Indian users from accessing a prominent Muslim news page on the social media site, as hostilities escalate between India and Pakistan.

Instagram users in India attempting to access the page – which uses the handle @Muslim and has 6.7 million followers – were met with the message: “Account not available in India. This is because we complied with a legal request to restrict this content.”

“I received hundreds of messages, emails and comments from our followers in India, that they cannot access our account,” Ameer al-Khatahtbeh, the account’s founder and editor, said in a statement.

“Meta has blocked the @Muslim account by legal request of the Indian government. This is censorship,” he added.

Meta declined to comment when contacted by AFP. But a spokesman for the firm directed the news agency to a company webpage outlining its policy for restricting content when governments believe material on its platforms goes “against local law”.

Access has also been blocked to the social media accounts of Pakistani actors and cricketers over recent days.

India–Pakistan conflict offers ‘strategic openings’ to China, Iran while limiting US influence

We posted earlier on how the Australian National University’s Alam Saleh said the escalating tension between India and Pakistan would be to China’s advantage and the US’s disadvantage in terms of regional geopolitics.

Saleh, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations at ANU, said sustained tension between India and Pakistan would tie down New Delhi’s attention and resources and place limits on its regional assertiveness and growing alignment with the US.

The US also finds itself in a “delicate position” between India – “a strategic partner” – on one hand, and Pakistan – a longtime, though complicated “security actor” – on the other, Saleh said.

Amid the tension, Iran “quietly benefits”, he added.

“As the US struggles with simultaneous crises in the Middle East and South Asia, its capacity to pressure Tehran, particularly in the context of faltering nuclear negotiations, is diminished,” Saleh told Al Jazeera.

“A distracted and overstretched Washington gives Iran more room to manoeuvre both regionally and diplomatically,” he said.

“In sum, the India–Pakistan conflict offers strategic openings to both China and Iran, while placing the United States in a position of reactive limitation rather than proactive influence,” he added.

Trump says he hopes India and Pakistan stop now after going ‘tit-for-tat’

US President Donald Trump said he hoped India and Pakistan would stop their escalation after they had “gone tit-for-tat”.

“They’ve gone tit-for-tat, so hopefully they can stop now,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday, adding he knew both sides “very well” and wanted “to see them work it out”.

“And if I can do anything to help, I will be there,” he added.

The US State Department said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had discussed efforts to de-escalate tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad with his Saudi Arabian counterpart in a call earlier on Wednesday.

Blasts heard in Pakistani city of Lahore

The Reuters news agency, citing geo reporting and witnesses on the ground, reports that blasts have been heard in the city of Lahore in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

We will bring you more information when we have it.

Pakistan-India ‘dog fight’ one of largest, longest in recent aviation history: Report

As we reported on Tuesday, the Pakistani military claimed that it had “downed Indian fighter jets” during fighting earlier this week.

A senior unnamed Pakistani security source has now told CNN that Pakistan’s military downed five Indian planes in what he described as one of the “largest and longest” aviation “dog fight[s]” in recent history.

The source said that a total of 125 fighter jets from both sides battled for over an hour earlier this week. He added that neither side left their own airspace and missile exchanges were happening at distances sometimes greater than 160km (100 miles).