Category World News

The United Kingdom’s government faces a High Court challenge over the export of F-35 jet components used by Israel.

Co-claimants Al-Haq, a Palestinian rights organisation, and the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) are behind the case.

“We’re going to court to try to force the government to stop supplying F-35 components to Israel,” Jennine Walker, a lawyer with GLAN and the legal firm Bindmans, representing Al-Haq, told Al Jazeera.

The four-day case is set to begin on Tuesday, as Israel’s onslaught in Gaza continues with the aid of F-35 jets, having already killed more than 61,700 people.

Here’s what you need to know:

What’s happening?

In September 2024, the UK suspended about 30 out of 350 arms export licences to Israel following a review that found there was “a clear risk certain military exports to Israel might be used in violations of international humanitarian law”, according to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

But it carved out an exception for F-35 jet components, citing the F-35 global programme’s importance to international security. The parts, however, would not be sent directly to Israel, the government said.

Al-Haq and GLAN argue that the government is breaking domestic and international law through a loophole by allowing the parts to be supplied to Israel via the global spares pool and F-35 partner countries, “despite the [International Court of Justice] finding that there is plausible risk of genocide being committed against Palestinians in Gaza”.

The UK reportedly provides about 15 percent of the components in the F-35 fighter jets used by Israel.

The case has taken on new significance after a report last week by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Progressives International and Workers for a Free Palestine suggested F-35 parts are still being sent directly to Israel as of March 2025.

“Despite the September 2024 suspension of direct shipments of F-35 components from the UK to Israel, the data suggest such shipments are ongoing as of March 2025”, the report said, citing Israeli tax authority data.

From Tuesday until Friday, High Court judges will examine whether the government’s decision to suspend some but not all arms licences for export to Israel was legally correct.

Al Jazeera understands the judicial review will focus on the carve-out for F-35 jet parts. The campaigners have said they aim to ensure the UK government “urgently suspends all arms exports to Israel”, while accusing the UK of “complicity” in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.

What will the campaigners argue?

Co-claimants Al-Haq and GLAN applied for a judicial review into arms export licences to Israel in December 2023, citing violations carried out by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

They say F-35 jets have plausibly been involved in war crimes.

“We know Israel is using the F-35 jets to bomb civilians. For example [in] the attack on March 18 which broke the ceasefire, and this wouldn’t be possible without the UK’s help,” Walker said.

“Hundreds of civilians died,” Walker said, referring to one of the deadliest days across Gaza when Israeli assaults killed more than 400 people. “We know every F-35 jet has some British parts.”

What’s the UK’s position?

In a statement sent to Al Jazeera, a spokesperson with the UK’s Foreign Office said, “This government has suspended relevant licences for the [Israeli army] that might be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.”

The spokesperson added that of the remaining licences for Israel, the “vast majority” are not for the Israeli army but for “civilian purposes or re-export, and therefore are not used in the war in Gaza”.

The spokesperson reiterated the government’s position that the F-35 programme exemption was “due to its strategic role in NATO and wider implications for international peace and security”, adding that “any suggestion that the UK is licensing other weapons for use by Israel in the war in Gaza is misleading”.

Which other groups are involved in the case?

Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are assisting the court by submitting written evidence.

Oxfam’s intervention is based on its documentation of the destruction caused by Israeli fire on water sanitation and health facilities.

Akshaya Kumar, the director of crisis advocacy at Human Rights Watch, raised the idea of criminal responsibility, referencing the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal.

“If you are a supplier, you are aiding and abetting the continued assault, the continued air strikes. You are part of that criminal responsibility,” she said.

Elizabeth Rghebi, the MENA advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, argued that several states have either been unwilling to observe international legal obligations or have claimed that the structure of the F-35 programme makes it impossible to apply arms controls to the end-user, “which would make the entire programme incompatible with international law”.

What is the scale of damage from Israeli air strikes in Gaza?

Israel’s latest military assault on Gaza began shortly after October 7, 2023, when Hamas, the group that governs the Strip, led an incursion into southern Israel, during which 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 were taken captive.

Israel has failed to achieve its stated aim of crushing Hamas, while its aerial bombardment from jets, including the F-35, has decimated civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, universities, libraries, mosques and churches.

Emeritus professor Paul Rogers from the University of Bradford said, “In terms of tonnage dropped, most modern wars have had very high levels of tonnage used. Gaza is probably one of the worst. If you go back to the Second World War – [there was] the carpet bombing of German cities, the firebombing of Japanese cities, for that matter, and, on a smaller scale, the bombing Britain experienced during the second and third years of the war.”

He added: “So, it’s not exceptional in that sense, but the concentration of so much firepower in a very small area is very unusual. It bears comparison with some of the worst examples of modern warfare and their impact on civilians.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has documented the woes inflicted on Gaza’s healthcare sector, including the systematic destruction of hospitals, withholding of medical supplies and the detention of doctors.

“Airstrikes and a lack of medical supplies, food, water and fuel have virtually depleted an already under-resourced health system,” the WHO said.

On May 4, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launched a barrage of suicide drones at Port Sudan, the army’s de facto wartime capital on the Red Sea.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) accused foreign actors of supporting the RSF’s attacks and even threatened to sever ties with one of its biggest trading partners.

The RSF surprised many with the strikes. It had used drones before, but never hit targets as far away as Port Sudan, which used to be a haven, until last week.

“The strikes … led to a huge displacement from the city. Many people left Port Sudan,” Aza Aera, a local relief worker, told Al Jazeera. “If the aggression continues … I think I’ll leave like everyone else.”

A drone war

When a civil war erupted between the SAF and RSF in April 2023, the army had aerial supremacy due to its fleet of warplanes and drones.

Yet the RSF is closing the gap with an arsenal of suicide drones, which it used on Port Sudan for six consecutive days, hitting an army base, a civilian airport, several hotels, and a fuel depot, which caused a massive blast.

“Sudan had already entered the phase of drone warfare over the last … few months at least,” said Suliman Baldo, the founder of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker think tank.

The army largely relies on the relatively affordable Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, reportedly receiving $120m worth of them since late 2023.

Bayraktars can travel long distances with a large payload, and the army says they helped it regain swaths of territory from the RSF in eastern and central Sudan between September 2024 and March 2025, including the capital Khartoum.

Despite losing significant ground, the RSF then stepped up its aggression against the SAF with Chinese-made drones, according to a recent report by Amnesty International.

The human rights group, Sudan’s de facto military government and other monitors all accuse the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of purchasing these drones – and other weapons – and supplying them to the RSF.

The UAE has denied the accusations as “baseless”.

“The UAE strongly rejects the suggestion that it is supplying weapons to any party involved in the ongoing conflict in Sudan,” said Salem Aljaberi, a spokesperson for the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a statement on X.

Regardless, the increasing use of drones by both sides marks an escalation and risks exacerbating an already catastrophic situation for civilians, according to experts and human rights monitors.

Bold announcement

On May 6, the army-backed authorities in Port Sudan announced the severing of all ties with the UAE after accusing it of being behind the attacks.

That announcement was not well thought-out, according to Baldo.

Sudan’s army could lose tens of millions of dollars in gold revenue, as well as access to vital banking operations, he told Al Jazeera.

A UAE-backed company, Emiral Resources, owns a majority of shares in Sudan’s largest gold mine, the Kush mine.

Kush is administered by Sudan’s army, which likely sells tens of millions of dollars worth of gold to the UAE.

According to the Central Bank of Sudan, about 97 percent of gold exports from army-controlled areas went to the UAE in 2023.

Kush exported at least one tonne of gold in 2024, although it is unclear how much higher the number is for production.

Furthermore, UAE banks own a majority share in the Bank of Khartoum, whose digital platform, Bankak, facilitates money transfers for millions of displaced Sudanese and public institutions.

The UAE state also owns El Nilein Bank, which manages and approves international transactions on behalf of Port Sudan, according to a report that Baldo co-authored in March for the Chatham House think tank.

“This was a rushed decision [to cut ties with the UAE] that will have serious consequences … due to the UAE’s control over [Sudan’s] national economy,” Baldo told Al Jazeera.

Major escalation?

Sudan’s army has not clarified how and when it will sever ties with the UAE.

On May 6, SAF chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan vowed in a video to “defeat the militia (RSF) and those who help them”.

Al Jazeera sent written questions to army spokesperson Nabil Abdullah, asking if Port Sudan will implement the announced suspension.

No reply was received by time of publication.

For its part, the UAE’s Foreign Ministry told Al Jazeera in an email that it will not retaliate against Port Sudan.

“The statement issued by the so-called ‘Security and Defence Council’ will not affect the deep-rooted and enduring ties between the UAE and the Republic of the Sudan, and their peoples,” the emailed statement said.

Meanwhile, experts and observers believe the war in Sudan is trending towards a major escalation.

The army’s regional backers could respond to the RSF’s increased use of drones by doubling down on their support for the army, warned Alan Boswell, a Sudan expert for the International Crisis Group.

“The obvious risk [from the attacks on Port Sudan] is that it brings other [regional powers] into deeper involvement on the army’s side,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We could see an escalating war with greater and greater firepower, and nothing would be left of Sudan’s infrastructure by the end of it.”

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, detained at the International Criminal Court (ICC), is on course to win the mayoral election in his home Davao City, and five candidates backed by his family are leading the Senate race as midterm election results appear to show the Duterte political dynasty’s continued grip on power.

The results are a big boost for Vice President Sara Duterte, Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, who faces impeachment by the Senate in July. A two-thirds majority is required to remove her from office and bar her from running in future elections, including the 2028 presidential one.

Twelve out of 24 Senate seats and all 317 seats in the House of Representatives were among the 18,320 elective positions up for grabs in the key election. Nearly 69 million people were registered to vote in the Asia Pacific country.

Who won the election?

With 97 percent of the votes reported, candidates backed by President Marcos Jr are on course to win six of the 12 seats in the Senate.

Duterte’s supporters, including staunch ally Christopher “Bong” Go are set to win five seats. One candidate who is winning a seat has been affiliated with both political families.

Rodrigo Duterte is set to win the mayoral seat in Davao after receiving more than 65 percent of the votes.

Duterte was the mayor of the southern city thrice, serving a total of 22 years. If he wins, it is likely that the role would be assumed by the city’s vice mayor, a position currently held by his son, Sebastian Duterte.

In the Philippines, candidates facing criminal charges, including those in detention, can run for office unless they are convicted.

What’s at stake?

While President Marcos Jr and Vice President Sara Duterte were not on the poll, their candidates were vying for positions from the Senate to municipal offices.

Sara Duterte is a strong contender for the 2028 presidential election. Her political future can be decided by the 24-member Senate. She requires support of nine Senate members to avoid conviction.

The 12 elected Senators will form half of the jury in her impeachment trial, which is tentatively set for July. If found guilty, she will be removed from office and barred from contesting future elections.

She was impeached by the House of Representatives in February after being accused of crimes ranging from the misuse of public funds to plotting Marcos’s assassination.

Sara Duterte says the impeachment is part of a political vendetta as the two families battle for power.

The fate of hundreds of governors and thousands of seats for city mayor and municipal mayors were also decided in this election.

The official results will be out within a week.

What is the political rivalry between the Marcos and Duterte families?

Sara Duterte is the daughter of former President Duterte, who was arrested and flown to the ICC at The Hague on March 11 by the Marcos Jr administration.

The elder Duterte was accused of “crimes against humanity” for the estimated deaths of 30,000 people during his tenures as mayor and president.

More than 7,000 people were killed during anti-drug operations while he was in power between 2016 and 2022, according to police records. Human rights advocates suggest the actual death toll was higher.

Marcos Jr allied with the Duterte family, which enjoyed popularity, during his successful 2022 presidential campaign, with Sara Duterte as his running mate. But the ties soon soured over policy differences and Marcos’s rejection of the war on drugs launched by Sara Duterte’s father, Rodrigo Duterte.

Finally, the alliance crumbled due to faltering support for Marcos Jr among supporters of the Duterte family after the arrest of Apollo Quiboloy, who was the spiritual adviser of former President Duterte. Quibology, an influential pastor, was charged with sex trafficking.

The arrest of Rodrigo Duterte on a warrant issued by the ICC further inflamed tension between the two political dynasties.

Until Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest, Marcos Jr repeatedly rejected the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) jurisdiction over his country, deeming the ICC “a threat” to the country’s sovereignty. Marcos Jr had held he would not assist the ICC in the elder Duterte’s arrest.

“Let me say this for the 100th time. I do not recognise the jurisdiction of ICC in the Philippines. The Philippine government will not lift a finger to help any investigation that the ICC conducts,” Marcos Jr said in early 2024.

In 2019, (Rodrigo) Duterte had removed the Philippines from the ICC, meaning the country was not required to detain someone with an ICC warrant against their name.

United States President Donald Trump has started his Middle East tour, arriving in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, just after 10am, where he was greeted by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

During his three-day trip, he will also travel to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with a focus on securing economic agreements with three of the world’s wealthiest nations.

The trip will involve discussions on investment opportunities, and some experts say Trump may urge the Gulf countries to lower oil prices.

When will Trump be visiting each country?

Trump arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday just before 10am local time (07:00 GMT), where he was greeted by MBS. The same day, he is scheduled to attend a Saudi-US investment forum featuring leading companies such as BlackRock, Citigroup, Palantir, Qualcomm, and Alphabet.

On Wednesday, he is scheduled to take part in a Gulf summit in Riyadh, before travelling to Qatar later that day. He will conclude his trip in the UAE on Thursday, May 15.

Trump’s first visit as president was to Saudi Arabia

During his first term, 2017 to 2021, Trump became the first US president to make the Middle East his first international destination, breaking with the longstanding tradition of visiting neighbouring North American countries first.

His trip to Saudi Arabia from May 20 to 22, 2017 – during which he attended the Riyadh Summit – was a calculated move to bolster defence ties and secure substantial arms deals.

During that trip, Trump also visited Israel and Palestine.

While Trump did not go to Qatar or the UAE during his first term, he met Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the Riyadh Summit.

During the summit, Trump and Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud signed a $110bn arms deal, including missile defence systems, tanks, combat ships and cybersecurity technology, with the intent of buying $350bn worth of arms over 10 years.

A memorable moment from that 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia was during the inauguration of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology in Riyadh. In a surreal photo op that quickly went viral, Trump stood alongside King Salman and President el-Sisi with their hands on a glowing orb.

What is the value of US-Gulf investments?

Sami al-Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, told Al Jazeera that Trump has been very vocal about his objective in visiting the three Gulf states: investments.

Trump’s administration has reportedly discussed the possibility of expediting investments by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE before his trip to the region.

“He’s trying to get trillions of dollars out of these countries,” al-Arian told Al Jazeera.

“He’s already said that he’s hoping to get $1 trillion from Saudi Arabia in terms of arms sales and commercial deals,” he said.

US-Saudi investments

According to the latest data from the US Department of Commerce, the total stock of US foreign direct investment (FDI) in Saudi Arabia reached $11.3bn in 2023.

Conversely, Saudi Arabia’s FDI stock in the US stood at $9.6bn, mostly in transport, real estate, plastics, automotive, financial services and communications, according to the Commerce Department.

These figures are only FDI, not other investments, like portfolio investments or short-term financial flows.

US-Qatar investments

In 2023, the total stock of US FDI in Qatar was estimated at $2.5bn.

According to the US-Qatar Business Council, US companies that have facilitated FDIs in Qatar focused on the fields of energy, petrochemicals, construction, engineering, and communications technology.

Conversely, Qatari FDI stock in the US reached $3.3bn in 2023, with investments concentrated in financial services, energy and real estate.

US-UAE investments

In 2023, the total stock of US FDI in the UAE reached $16.1bn.

According to the Reuters news agency, in 2023, the main FDI drivers were manufacturing, finance and insurance, construction and wholesale and retail trade sectors.

Meanwhile, UAE FDI stock in the US totalled $35bn in 2023 – in financial services, transport, food and beverages, aerospace, and business services, according to the Commerce Department.

In March, UAE National Security Adviser Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan met Trump and committed $1.4 trillion in investments to the US over 10 years in sectors such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, energy and manufacturing.

Weapons trade between the nations

The US is the biggest exporter of arms globally and a top supplier to Gulf countries.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia each accounted for 6.8 percent of the world’s total arms imports for 2020-24, making them the third and fourth largest importers globally.

The UAE is the 11th largest importer of arms, accounting for 2.6 percent of global imports for the same period.

Saudi Arabia is the main recipient of US arms, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Between 2020 and 2024, Saudi Arabia received 12 percent of the US’s total arms exports.

About 74 percent of Saudi arms imports come from the US.

Trump is poised to offer Saudi Arabia an arms package worth more than $100bn during his trip, according to Reuters.

In the 2020-24 period, the US was the top supplier of arms to Qatar, accounting for 48 percent of its imports.

In March, the US Department of State approved a large weapons package to Qatar worth $2bn, which includes long-range maritime surveillance drones and hundreds of missiles and bombs.

New Delhi, India – Guns have fallen silent for now along the tense India-Pakistan frontier, after a ceasefire that appears to have held for three nights.

On May 7, India launched predawn attacks on what it called multiple “terror sites” across Pakistan to avenge the April 22 killing of 26 men, almost all of them tourists, in Indian-administered Kashmir’s resort town of Pahalgam. New Delhi accused Islamabad of backing the gunmen. Pakistan denied its involvement.

India’s aerial assault kick-started four days of heightened tension, as both neighbours fired missiles and drones at each other’s military installations in a rapidly escalating cycle that brought them to the brink of full-scale war.

Both sides have claimed to have decisively damaged, even destroyed, the other’s key strategic facilities, even though early evidence suggests more limited damage to military bases in both India and Pakistan.

Yet even as India and Pakistan arrived at a ceasefire that United States President Donald Trump insists his administration brokered, experts say something has indeed been decimated, potentially beyond repair: Old red lines that had defined the tense relationship between the South Asian neighbours.

“India and Pakistan have entered a phase of ‘armed coexistence’ with little room for diplomacy and a narrow margin for error, despite having a live and sensitive border,” Praveen Donthi, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera.

“This situation does not bode well for either country or the region, because even accidental triggers could escalate into a war-like situation with no guardrails in place.”

India-Pakistan dispute: Who settles it?

The seeds of the India-Pakistan conflict were sown when their independence from British rule in 1947 was accompanied by a partition of the Indian subcontinent to create Pakistan.

Since then, the two neighbours have fought four wars, three of them over Kashmir, a region they both control partially along with China, which governs two thin slices in the north. India claims all of Kashmir, while Pakistan claims all parts other than the ones governed by China, its ally.

After their 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan signed what is known as the Simla Agreement, which said “the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations.”

While Pakistan has often cited United Nations resolutions to argue for international involvement in the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, India has cited the Simla Agreement for more than half a century to insist that any negotiations between the countries be strictly bilateral.

To be sure, the US has since intervened to calm tensions between India and Pakistan: In 1999, for instance, President Bill Clinton pressured Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to withdraw troops from the icy heights of Indian-controlled Kargil, where they had entered. However, Washington publicly played coy about its role, allowing India to insist that the US had only helped with crisis management, not any dispute resolution mediation.

That changed on Saturday, when US President Donald Trump upstaged New Delhi and Islamabad to announce a “full and immediate” India-Pakistan ceasefire hours before the governments of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his Pakistani counterpart Shehbaz Sharif confirmed the development.

The next day, Trump went further. “I will work with you, both to see if, after a ‘thousand years,’ a solution can be arrived at concerning Kashmir,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

And on Monday, merely 30 minutes before Modi was scheduled for his first address since India launched attacks in Pakistan, Trump told reporters at the White House that his administration had leveraged trade to reach a ceasefire. “Let’s stop [the fighting]. If you stop it, we’ll do a trade. If you don’t stop it, we’re not going to do any trade,” Trump said. “And all of a sudden they said, ‘I think we’re going to stop.’ For a lot of reasons, but trade is a big one.”

Such US mediation, were it to happen, would shatter India’s longstanding red line against mediation by other countries, say experts.

“India has consistently sought to avoid third-party involvement in the Kashmir dispute even as it has occasionally welcomed third-party help in crisis management,” Christopher Clary, a former Pentagon official and a non-resident fellow at the Washington, DC-based Stimson Center, told Al Jazeera.

When he spoke, Modi largely stuck to traditional positions he has taken after previous bouts of tension with Pakistan. He said “terror and talks cannot happen together,” and “water and blood cannot flow together,” a reference to the Indus Waters Treaty for sharing water between India and Pakistan, which New Delhi walked out of after the Pahalgam attack.

Unlike Pakistan PM Sharif, who expressed gratitude to Trump for brokering a ceasefire, Modi claimed that India had “only paused” its military action – noting the decision was taken bilaterally. He did not mention Trump or his administration.

Regardless, “the spectre of international intervention” in Kashmir has been resurrected, said Sumantra Bose, political scientist and the author of the 2021 book Kashmir at the Crossroads. He said India’s furious barrage of missiles and drones at Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam killings “catered to domestic jingoism but naturally roused global alarm”.

India might, however, be helped in avoiding actual US intervention in Kashmir by the immediacy of the Trump administration’s other foreign policy goals, like the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, “that will divert already overburdened [American] policymakers to other tasks”, said Clary.

Unprecedented targets

According to Bose, India and Pakistan crossed not just red lines, “but a Rubicon by attacking numerous high-population targets in cities and towns” last week.

India, in its most expansive offensive against Pakistan outside full-blown wars, said it hit “terrorist infrastructure” on May 7 as part of what it called Operation Sindoor. That was a reference to the vermillion that married Hindu women apply to their forehead, and an allusion to the manner in which the Pahalgam attack appears to have unfolded: Multiple witness accounts suggest the attackers segregated the men, then picked and hit non-Muslims.

Modi claimed, in his Monday statement, that the Indian attacks had killed more than 100 “terrorists”. Pakistan has insisted that only 31 civilians – including two children – were killed in the May attacks.

Yet both sides agree that the Indian missiles struck not just two cities – Muzaffarrabad and Kotli – in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, but also four cities in Pakistan’s Punjab province, the county’s economic heart and home to 60 percent of its population. The targets were Bahawalpur, Muridke, Shakar Garh and a village near Sialkot. This was the first time that India had struck Punjab since the 1971 war.

As tensions spiked, India accused Pakistan of unleashing a swarm of drones towards it – a charge Islamabad denied. Then India launched a wave of drones that reached Pakistan’s biggest population centres, including its two biggest cities, Karachi and Lahore. In the early hours of May 10, India and Pakistan fired missiles at each other’s military bases across multiple provinces – far beyond disputed Kashmir – even hitting a few.

Pakistan, which called its campaign Operation Bunyan Marsoos (a structure made of lead, in Arabic), targeted Indian air force bases and missile storage facilities in Drangyari, Udhampur, Uri and Nagrota (all in Indian-administered Kashmir), as well as in Pathankot, Beas and Adampur in Indian Punjab and Bhuj in Gujarat, Modi’s home state. Indian armed forces said that while they shot down most incoming missiles and drones, four air force bases suffered “limited damage”.

“We don’t know what the quantum [of Indian losses] are, but clearly Pakistan has demonstrated capability to impose costs on India even as we try to impose costs on them,” Indian military historian and strategic analyst Srinath Raghavan told Al Jazeera.

“Regarding red lines, another thing Pakistan sought to demonstrate was that they could keep this [the fighting] going till they had hit Indian military installations in retaliation.”

Meanwhile, India too targeted the Nur Khan airbase near Rawalpindi, Murid airbase in Chakwal and the Rafiqui airbase in Shorkot.

“India has shown that it is willing and capable of carrying out more strikes across the border, whether it’s a terrorist or even military infrastructure in Pakistan,” Raghavan said. India’s response went far beyond what happened in 2019, when Indian jets bombed what they described as a “terrorist camp” in Balakot, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, after a suicide bomber killed more than 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers.

Now, the 2025 attacks will serve as the new baseline for India, experts said.

“India would respond [in the future] on a similar scale, perhaps even a little bit more. Given the way both Balakot and the current crisis have played out, that should be the expectation,” said Raghavan.

Other weapons: Water to peace pacts

It isn’t just missiles and drones that the two sides fired at each other, though.

Right after the Pahalgam attack, India suspended its participation in the Indus Waters Treaty, a 1960 agreement that had previously survived three wars – in 1965, 1971 and 1999 – unscathed. The treaty gives India access to the waters of the three eastern rivers of the Indus basin: The Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. Pakistan, in turn, gets the waters of the three western rivers: The Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.

The river system is a vital lifeline for Pakistan, which relies on its waters. India, as the upper riparian state, has the ability – in theory at least – to restrict or stop the flow of the water into Pakistan. Islamabad described New Delhi’s decision to walk away from its obligations under the Indus Waters Treaty as an “act of war”.

In an incendiary remark at the peak of the tensions, Pakistani former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto said “either the water will flow, or their blood will,” seemingly referring to Indians.

Three days after the ceasefire was announced, India has still not recommitted itself to the pact. In his speech on Monday evening, Modi’s statement that “blood and water cannot flow together” signalled that New Delhi had not yet decided to return to the treaty.

New nuclear threshold?

Even as India and Pakistan ratcheted up their measures – first diplomatically, then militarily – against each other, the rest of the world was spooked by the prospect of what could have turned into a full-blown war between nuclear-armed neighbours.

Up until now, that reality of nuclear weapons has affected India’s decisions in terms of how it treats its tensions with Pakistan, said Clary, the former Pentagon official. “India’s goal is to punish Pakistan without risking nuclear danger,” he said.

But on Monday, Modi appeared to suggest that New Delhi was reassessing that approach. “India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail. India will strike precisely and decisively at the terrorist hideouts developing under the cover of nuclear blackmail,” he said.

Modi’s comments pointed to a “fundamental shift that has occurred in relations between India and Pakistan”, Donthi, the International Crisis Group analyst, said. “Both sides are willing to take greater risks and explore the potential for escalation below the nuclear threshold. However, there is very little space there, effectively making the euphemism of the region being a nuclear flashpoint truer than ever.”

Armed group or Pakistani government? No difference to India

Modi’s comments on “nuclear blackmail” weren’t the only ones that marked a break from the past.

When India launched attacks against Pakistan on May 7, it emphasised that it was only targeting “terrorist” bases and not attacking Pakistani military installations. However, on Monday, Modi said that in future, “India will not differentiate between the government sponsoring terrorism and the masterminds of terrorism.”

That position raises the danger of war, said experts.

“The conflation of terrorists and their (alleged) backers – namely, the military and the government – portends serious risks,” Donthi said. “It assumes that they are in lockstep. Such an assumption doesn’t take into account facts such as the seemingly successful ceasefire.”

India and Pakistan had signed a ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) in 2003 and had renewed it in 2021. Despite cross-border firing along the LoC, the ceasefire had largely held until last week.

With the threshold for a military conflict lowered, “the situation has become precarious,” Donthi said.