Lalit Shastri

US President Donald Trump’s boastful claim of having “brokered” a “ceasefire” between India and Pakistan is not just inaccurate—it is an affront to India’s strategic sovereignty and its war against state-sponsored terror. By placing India and Pakistan on the same moral and political plane, and describing both as “great nations,” Trump has chosen opportunistic optics over geopolitical truth.

India did not agree to a “ceasefire” under American pressure. India has only paused it’s attack. This has been done after it had comprehensively dismantled Pakistan’s offensive and defensive war machinery. In a swift, surgical operation, India neutralized at least 20 percent of the Pakistani Air Force, demolished terror training camps, flattened jihadi launch pads, and struck critical military infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

A key highlight of India’s retaliation was the devastating accuracy of its indigenous missile arsenal—particularly the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, which proved unstoppable in real-time battlefield conditions. Indian forces deployed these missiles with lethal precision to obliterate Pakistan’s air defense systems, many of which were supplied and upgraded by the United States, China, and Turkey. What was touted as a multi-layered defensive shield was reduced to scrap in mere minutes. SAM batteries, early-warning systems, and radar installations—all were rendered useless under India’s coordinated barrage.

Pakistan’s much-hyped nuclear bluff was also decisively countered. India successfully disabled key elements of Pakistan’s nuclear delivery infrastructure, ensuring that any attempt at first-strike blackmail would end in total self-annihilation for the aggressor.

This was not just a retaliatory strike—it was a technological and strategic demonstration of India’s indigenous might. Through DRDO’s surveillance grids, India showcased self-reliance, precision warfare, and political resolve. The pause in attack by India, when it came, was on India’s terms after the Pak DG Military Operations picked the hotline phone and talking to his Indian counterpart begged for a “ceasefire” —not as a result of Trump’s so-called diplomacy, but because India had made its point through hard power.

To now hear Trump claim credit, and worse, equate Indian leadership with the terror-sponsoring military-mullah complex that runs Pakistan, is both offensive and dangerous. It diminishes the sacrifices of Indian armed forces and whitewashes decades of Pakistani aggression.

Trump’s flippant remarks about using “trade as arm-twisting” only add insult to injury. India is no client state. It is a rising superpower with a clear moral compass and an iron military fist. And when India strikes, it does so with finality and purpose—not because someone in Washington made a call.

Let me say it straight – the pause in strike by India was not brokered, it was dictated—by an India that has shed the baggage of restraint, and that now answers terrorism with steel and fire.

India doesn’t need brokers. It needs—and has—command.