As a conflict between India and Pakistan intensified, vice president JD Vance told Fox News on Thursday that he was “fundamentally none of our affairs.” The United States could advise both sides that they retreated, suggested, but this was not the United States struggle.
However, within 24 hours, Mr. Vance and Marco Rubio, in his first week in the double role of the National Secretary and Secretary of State Advisor, found themselves in the details. The reason was the same that led Bill Clinton in 1999 to deal with another important conflict between the two enemies for a long time: fear that it can become nuclear quickly.
What led Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio to the action was evidence that the Pakistani and Indian air forces had begun to participate in serious dog fights, and that Pakistan had sent 300 to 400 drones to the Indian territory to investigate their aerial defenses. But the most important causes of the concern occurred on Friday night, when the explosions reached the Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the city of the garrison adjacent to Islamabad.
The base is a key installation, one of the Central Transportation Centers for the Pakistan Army and the home of the air refueling capacity that would maintain the Pakistani combatants high. But it is also a short distance from the headquarters of the Division of Strategic Plans of Pakistan, which supervises and protects the country’s nuclear arsenal, it is now believed that it includes around 170 or more eyelets. They are supposed to extend themselves throughout the country.
The intense fight broke out between India and Pakistan after 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, were killed in a terrorist attack on April 22 in Kashmir, a border region claimed by both nations. On Saturday morning, President Trump announced that the two countries had agreed to stop the fire.
A former American official is familiar with the Pakistan nuclear program on Saturday that the fear of Pakistan’s dependent is whether his nuclear command authority is being beheaded. The missile strike against Nur Khan could have been interpreted, said the former official, as a warning that India could do exactly that.
It is not clear if there was American intelligence that points to a quick and perhaps nuclear scaling of the conflict. At least in public, the only obvious nuclear signaling piece came from Pakistan. Local media reported that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had summoned a meeting of the National Command Authority, the small group that makes decisions about how and when to use nuclear weapons.
Established in 2000, the body is nominally chaired by the Prime Minister and includes civil ministers and high -ranking military chiefs. Actually, the driving force behind the group is the head of the Army, General Syed also Munir.
But Pakistan Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif denied that the group once has. Speaking on Pakistani television on Saturday before the high fire was announced, he recognized the existence of the nuclear option, but said: “We should treat it as a very distant possibility; we should discuss it.”
It was discussed in the Pentagon, and for Friday morning, the White House had clearly made the extraction that some public statements and some calls to officials in Islamabad and Delhi were not enough. The interventions of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had little effect.
Duration his interview with Fox News, Mr. Vance had also said that “we are worried about any time when the nuclear powers Chocen and have an important conflict.” He added that “what we can do is encourage people of thesis to break down a bit.”
According to a person of a person with the events that are developed that they were not authorized to speak publicly about them, serious concerns were developed in the administration after that interview that the conflict ran the risk of being out of control.
The rhythm of the strikes and the contracts was collecting. While India had initially focused on what she called “known terrorist camps” linked to Lashkar-E-Taiba, a militant group blamed for April’s attack, was now aimed at the Pakistani military bases.
The Trump administration was also concerned that the messages to decrease did not reach the high officials on both sides.
Then, US officials decided that Mr. Vance, who had returned a couple of weeks before a trip to India with his wife, Usha, whose parents are Indian immigrants, should call directly Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His message was that the United States had evaluated that there was a high probability of a dramatic scale of violence that could lean in a large -scale war.
According to the American account, Mr. Vance pressed Mr. Modi to consider alternatives to continuous strikes, including a possible ramp outside the ramp that US officials thought it would be acceptable for Pakistani. Mr. Modi listed but did not commit to any of the ideas.
Mr. Rubio, according to the State Department, spoke with General Munir, a conversation that his new role is easier as a national security advisor. Around the last quarter of the century, the White House has often served, although in silence, as a direct channel to the Pakistani army, the most powerful institution in the country.
Mr. Rubio also called the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Ishaq Dar, and the Minister of Nationalist Affairs of India, S. Jaishankar, whom he had on January 22 in Washington.
It is not clear how persuasive it was at least initial.
The State Department did not have a press conference on Saturday about the content of those calls, but also issued basic descriptions of conversations that have no sense of dynamics between Mr. Rubio and leaders in southern Asia. But the constant flow of calls from the event on Friday to an early Saturday seemed to lay a base for the high fire.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official who was not authorized to publicly comment on the negotiations accredited the participation of Americans in the last 48 hours, and in particular the intervention of Mr. Rubio, for sealing the agreement. But until Saturday night, there were reports that the cross -border shot continued.
Mr. Sharif, the prime minister, focused on the role of US President. “We thank President Trump for his leadership and his proactive role for peace in the region,” he wrote about X. “Pakistan appreciates the United States for facilitating this result, which we have accepted in the interest of regional peace and stability.”
India, in contrast, did not recognize any participation of the United States.
It is far from clear that the high fire will remain, or that the damage caused may not trigger more compensation. Pakistan knocked down five Indian planes, for some accounts. (The Indian side has not commented on their losses).
The Pakistani intelligence, said the senior official, evaluated that India was trying to give Islamabad to go beyond a defensive response. India wanted Pakistan to use her own F-16 combat planes in a retaliation attack so they could try to tear down one, said the official. The Jets were sold by the United States, Becoaus Pakistan, is still considered a “Non NATO ally”, a status president George W. Bush gave the country in the months after the attacks of September 11.
The senior Pakistani intelligence officer said that the US intervention was necessary to remove the two parts of the edge of the war.
“The last movement came from the president,” said the official.
