Four days of war and a ceasefire Trump announced

Background

On 22 April 2025 gunmen killed 26 people, most of them tourists, in the Baisaran meadow near Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan-based militants and took a series of measures, including placing the Indus Waters Treaty "in abeyance"; Pakistan denied involvement, called for a neutral investigation and retaliated diplomatically¹.

What happened

On 7 May India launched missile strikes, which it called Operation Sindoor, on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir that it said were terrorist infrastructure. Pakistan said civilians were killed and claimed to have shot down several Indian aircraft. Over the following days the two militaries exchanged drone, missile and artillery attacks, including on air bases^1,2.

On 10 May Trump announced on social media that, after a long night of talks mediated by the United States, India and Pakistan had agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire^2,3. In a statement titled "Announcing a U.S.-Brokered Ceasefire between India and Pakistan", Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that over the previous 48 hours he and Vice President JD Vance had engaged senior Indian and Pakistani officials, and that the two governments had agreed to an immediate ceasefire and to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site^7,8. India's account was that Pakistan's Director General of Military Operations had called his Indian counterpart that afternoon and that the two had agreed to stop firing from 5 pm Indian time².

Pakistan publicly thanked the United States. In June its government announced that it would recommend Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of what it called his decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership during the crisis; the move was mocked by some commentators^4,6. India, by contrast, said there had been no US mediation; after a call between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump on 18 June, India's foreign secretary said Modi had told Trump that India had never accepted and would never accept third-party mediation with Pakistan⁵.

Two readings

The disagreement over who ended the fighting was not merely a matter of pride. For Pakistan, crediting Washington internationalised a crisis it had long argued could only be solved with outside help, and kept open the prospect of US engagement on Kashmir, which Trump said he would like to help resolve³. For India, accepting mediation would have contradicted a policy, held since the 1972 Simla Agreement, that disputes with Pakistan are strictly bilateral. The United States, for its part, presented the outcome as a success of presidential diplomacy, and Trump repeatedly cited it in later speeches.

Why it mattered

The crisis marked a turning point in US–Pakistan relations. Washington's willingness to engage both sides - and Trump's repeated public claims of credit, which Pakistan embraced and India resented - gave Pakistan a diplomatic opening it had lacked for years. It also strained US–India relations, already tested by trade disputes.

Legacy

The ceasefire held, though without any broader India–Pakistan dialogue. The episode underlies the warmer US–Pakistan ties of 2025–26, including Field Marshal Munir's White House lunch in June 2025.