LOOKING back at 2025, several regional inflection points stand out: Pakistan’s four-day confrontation with India, the conflict between Israel and Iran less than a month later, followed by Pakistan’s subsequent cross-border strikes targeting terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan. Yet the coda to these episodes — India’s insistence that the conflict with Pakistan is merely paused rather than resolved, fresh American threats against the Iranian regime, and unabated terrorism within Pakistan — suggests that whatever semblance of regional stability currently exists is provisional at best.

First, take India, whose regional clout has taken several hits. Chafed by US claims of a decisive American intervention in the conflict with Pakistan, shaken by the loss of military hardware, and facing worsening relationships with its smaller neighbours, the BJP finds itself, perhaps for the first time, on the regional back foot. The reflexive temptation will be to look for external wins that can offset domestic perceptions of weakness abroad, and it would certainly help if those new wins could simultaneously amend the international narrative around how the........

© Dawn