Successful military operation in a nuclear state! Why will ‘Operation Sindoor’ be recorded separately in the pages of history!

This time India has taught a lesson to Pakistan which always threatens nuclear attack -Photo- Reuters.

Operation Sindoor is the first operation of its kind through which India has indicated that it has seen the nexus between terrorists and the Pakistani government. Pakistan had been waging a proxy war against India through terrorists for more than three decades and the attack was a retaliation for that.

On May 12 at 8 pm, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation. His 22-minute speech will define his legacy. Speaking 72 hours after the IAF’s air strikes against Pakistan’s terrorist and military infrastructure, the Prime Minister spoke about how Operation Sindoor had established a new normal in India’s fight against terrorism.

He said, ‘Indian drones and missiles carried out precision strikes, damaged Pakistani airbases and caused unimaginable damages to them in the first three days.’

Prime Minister Modi talked about a three-pronged strategy to deal with state-sponsored terrorism which includes a befitting reply to all forms of terror, no distinction between terror sponsors and terrorists, and precision strikes on terrorist bases being developed under the guise of nuclear blackmail.

Operation Sindoor is the first of its kind. Through this, India has indicated that it has seen through the Pakistani army’s deceitfulness in using terrorists to attack India. India’s attacks in Pakistan started after the massacre of 26 Indian tourists in Pahalgam on 22 April. But the attack was a revenge for the proxy war that Pakistan has been waging against India for more than three decades.

Pakistan’s threat of nuclear attack did not work, India taught it a lesson

Operation Sindoor was India’s first cross-border counter-terrorism mission in which all three services took part. The Army attacked across the LoC, the Air Force attacked targets inside Pakistan and a carrier battle group of the Indian Navy was deployed to attack from south of Karachi.

India’s attacks killed 100 terrorists and Pakistan’s threat of nuclear attack did not work. And that is why Operation Sindoor is a historic event – one that military strategists will study for decades.

India became the first nuclear country to attack another nuclear power through the Air Force. Nuclear weapons have been used only once, when the US bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

In the Cold War that followed, both the Soviet Union, Russia and the US kept more than 70,000 nuclear weapons that were always kept on alert mode. To prevent the war from turning into a nuclear war, the two superpowers never fought a military war. Instead, they fought proxy wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Military confrontation between nuclear-armed countries has occurred only twice before: the Sino-Soviet border war in 1969 and the India-Pakistan war in Kargil in 1999. Both conflicts were confined to the border. The air forces of both sides did not cross the border for fear of escalating tensions.

India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since 1947, tested nuclear weapons in 1998 to become openly nuclear-armed countries.

India’s nuclear weapons program was developed under the supervision of its prime ministers. In Pakistan, the military led by General Zia staged a coup in 1976, which took control of the nuclear program. Pakistan had achieved nuclear fission for the first time five years earlier in 1971. Pakistan developed the atomic bomb so that it would not lose its territory to India in the future.

But later, its nuclear weapons became a boon for the terrorist proxy groups that the Pakistani army started nurturing after the 1979-1988 Afghan war.

Pakistan kept nurturing terrorists by hoodwinking the US

Pakistan played this double game with great skill during the US’ Global War on Terror. The US launched the global war on terror after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in which 2,977 people were killed.
Between 2001 and 2021, Pakistan fooled the US. The US had made Pakistan a frontline country in the fight against terror but Pakistan kept sheltering the Taliban and Al Qaeda under this cover who were killing American soldiers in Afghanistan.

During this time, Pakistan tried to play a dirty game with India. Pakistani generals threatened that if the Indian army attacks Pakistan, Pakistan will be forced to use nuclear weapons.

Pakistan’s nuclear test and Kargil war

General Musharraf sent three brigades of his Northern Light Infantry to capture the Kargil Hills in 1999. This daring intrusion took place almost a year after the 1998 nuclear tests. Vajpayee sent the Indian Army to drive out the intruders but forbade his army from crossing the Line of Control or the international border.

In December 2001, Pakistan-sponsored Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists attacked India’s Parliament but Vajpayee never gave the order to cross the border. Operation Parakram was called off six months later.

In a briefing on Operation Parakram, a worried Vajpayee had told Indian military officials, “They have the bomb…” and the Pakistani army escaped without punishment despite its involvement in the Parliament attack.

Prime Minister Vajpayee ordered Indian nuclear weapon tests on May 10, 1998, after which India faced a lot of international criticism. But Pakistan had a terrorist gang backed by nuclear weapons that even Vajpayee had no answer to.

India responded by entering Pakistan

But Pakistan’s decades-old threat was answered on 7 May 2025. Indian Air Force planes carrying ammunition entered Pakistan at night. While India’s BrahMos missiles were targeting the Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters at three times the speed of sound, India and Pakistan were fighting on the ground below.

In the biggest single-day battle of the 21st century, India attacked inside Pakistan with hundreds of missiles. 48 hours later, Pakistan responded with a barrage of drones and ballistic missiles on Indian air bases. Pakistan fired at least one Fatah-2 ballistic missile at Sirsa airbase in Haryana, 258 km from the capital Delhi. The limits were crossed as never before had a nuclear-armed country fired a ballistic missile at another nuclear-armed country.

This attack by Pakistan led the Indian Air Force to launch the third phase of Operation Sindoor. For 90 minutes before dawn on May 10, India unleashed a massive horrific attack on Pakistan.

India also targeted GHQ-Rawalpindi, Chaklala airbase, which is close to the headquarters of the Strategic Plans Division that handles Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and Sargodha airbase near the Kirana Hills complex where the Pakistani army keeps its nuclear weapons, sending strategic messages. Perhaps this is why Pakistan reached out for US mediation. Both India and Pakistan agreed to end the fighting on May 10.

‘India attacked the heart of Pakistan’

Prime Minister Modi’s statement on May 12 made it clear that Operation Parakram is now a thing of the past. He said, “Pakistan had prepared to attack the border, but India attacked the heart of Pakistan.”

Indian officials say that the IAF attacks on May 10 damaged 20% of the PAF’s infrastructure and killed 50 military personnel. Due to this, the Pakistan Air Force had to retreat to its rear bases and resume combat operations from the highway.

Pakistani army accountants have been calculating the damage to military infrastructure over the past few days. The damage to its military infrastructure is likely to be more than the $1 billion (8,500 crore Indian rupees or 28,000 crore Pakistani rupees) loan given to Pakistan by the IMF on May 9.