Why US should take a harder stance against Pakistan – Firstpost

On April 22, 2025, seven terrorists attacked a valley near Pahalgam in Kashmir, India. The terrorists reportedly demanded males whom they came across to recite Islamic prayers and show that they were circumcised. Those who could not or were not—they were shot dead.

While only 26 people—25 Indians and a Nepali—died, the attack was reminiscent of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, with terrorists hunting down and executing non-Muslims. As with the October 7, 2023, attack, most attackers escaped—at least initially.

Just as after the Hamas attack, there is no doubt about responsibility. A week ago, Pakistan Army Chief Asif Munir spoke of Kashmir as Pakistan’s “jugular vein”. He asked Pakistanis to teach their children about the “stark differences between Hindus and Muslims” and said that Pakistan would never abandon its Kashmir fight. Apparently, he greenlighted the attack that an offshoot of the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba—The Resistance Front—had claimed but later denied. The only difference between Munir and Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden is that Bin Laden lived in a cave and Munir lives in a mansion. Munir should now meet the same fate as Bin Laden.

It is no coincidence that the attack occurred as US Vice President JD Vance visited India. Here, there is a parallel to a similar attack in Kashmir when Bill Clinton visited India a quarter century ago. Pakistani authorities cannot stand that India moves forward while Pakistan continues to teeter on the brink of failure, and so Islamabad hopes to take the sheen off New Delhi. It will never work, however. India will be a superpower by the end of the century, while Pakistan will be at best a satrapy of China and at worst a new Somalia.

The Pahalgam attack was not only an attack on sovereign India and a reprehensible act of terror, but its timing to coincide with JD Vance’s visit also makes it a test for the US.

Successive US administrations dating back to George W Bush’s in 2001 have praised and promoted US-India ties. Most recently, President Donald Trump praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a great friend. Rhetoric is easy, however. With Indians being slaughtered by Pakistan-backed terrorists solely based on their religion and nationality, Modi should demand Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio cease empty virtue signalling and diplomatic hand-wringing and designate Pakistan as a state sponsor of terror and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency as a terror organisation.

Americans should demand the same thing, especially given Islamabad’s unwillingness to bring to justice those terrorists who killed not only Indians but also Americans in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

There is also precedent for terror designation. Just over six years ago, Trump designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organisation in its entirety. Nine months later, he ordered a US drone to strike Iranian Quds Force general Qassem Soleimani while he drove along an isolated stretch of Baghdad’s airport road.

If Trump can strike at Iranian terror leaders, Modi should have US support should he choose to target Pakistani terrorists, whether they wear army uniforms or not.

The State Department should also strip diplomatic immunity from any ISI member assigned to Pakistan’s embassy in the US in a move to coincide with the terror designation. All ISI members should have 48 hours to depart the US. The State Department should limit the travel of all other Pakistani diplomats to 40 kilometres from Washington, DC, or New York, much as US authorities do for North Koreans, Iranians, Eritreans, Venezuelans, and other adversaries. Certainly Pakistan would respond in kind, but that is fine; it is not an important country for Washington anyway.

The State Department should also cease the fiction that Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir is valid. No Pakistan-based US diplomat should visit Pakistan-occupied Kashmir or do anything that affirms or accepts Pakistan’s occupation.

For too long, India has acquiesced to the US embracing a diplomatic fiction of Pakistani reform. After Pahalgam, that must cease permanently. Friends have each other’s backs. It is time to show India that the US treats India’s security concerns as its own.

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.