Nuclear Neighbors India and Pakistan are a Step Closer To War. Here’s a Timeline of How It Happened

An Indian police personnel stands outside a house that was damaged by Pakistani artillery shelling in Jammu on May 10, 2025. (Photo by Rakesh BAKSHI / AFP)
An Indian police personnel stands outside a house that was damaged by Pakistani artillery shelling in Jammu on May 10, 2025. (Photo by Rakesh BAKSHI / AFP)
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Nuclear Neighbors India and Pakistan are a Step Closer To War. Here’s a Timeline of How It Happened

An Indian police personnel stands outside a house that was damaged by Pakistani artillery shelling in Jammu on May 10, 2025. (Photo by Rakesh BAKSHI / AFP)
An Indian police personnel stands outside a house that was damaged by Pakistani artillery shelling in Jammu on May 10, 2025. (Photo by Rakesh BAKSHI / AFP)

A gun massacre of tourists on April 22 has pushed India and Pakistan a step closer to war, marking the biggest breakdown in relations since 2019.
Conflict between India and Pakistan is not rare, with the two countries having periodically engaged in wars, clashes and skirmishes since gaining independence from British India in 1947.
What’s different about this escalation is the frequency and intensity of strikes and retaliation.
Although the US had said it would not step in, it is now offering assistance in “starting constructive talks” between India and Pakistan to avoid future conflicts. But calls for restraint from the international community have yet to make an impact.
Here’s a timeline of how the latest conflict has unfolded:
April 22 Gunmen shoot and kill at least 26 tourists at a Pahalgam resort in Indian-controlled Kashmir, a major shift in a regional conflict that has largely spared civilians. The unidentified gunmen also wound 17 other people. A group called Kashmir Resistance, which India accuses Pakistan of backing, claims the attack.
Survivors tell The Associated Press that gunmen asked people if they were Hindu and then opened fire.
April 23 India downgrades diplomatic ties, closes the only functional land border crossing, and suspends a crucial water-sharing treaty that has survived two wars and a major border skirmish between the two countries.
India launches a manhunt for the Pahalgam assailants. Pakistan denies involvement with the attack.
April 24 India and Pakistan cancel visas for each other’s nationals, setting a deadline for them to leave. In retaliation, Pakistan shuts its airspace for all Indian-owned or Indian-operated airlines, and suspends all trade with India, including to and from any third country.
Government ministers on both sides hint the dispute could escalate to military action.
April 25 India says its troops exchanged fire with Pakistani soldiers at the Line of Control, the de facto border dividing the disputed Kashmir region.
Pakistan warns it could suspend an agreement that established the Line of Control, in what would be a major and worrying step. The United Nations urges both sides to “exercise maximum restraint.”
April 26 Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vows his government will respond “with full force and might” to Indian attempts to stop or divert the flow of water.
Iran offers mediation, while Trump says he expects them to work out their differences. “There’s great tension between Pakistan and India, but there always has been,” he tells reporters aboard Air Force One.
April 30 Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir temporarily close dozens of resorts in the scenic Himalayan region after the deadly attack on tourists.
Troops from both countries exchange fire over the Line of Control for a fifth consecutive night.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar says his government has “credible intelligence” that India intends to carry out military action against Pakistan in the next 24 to 36 hours.
May 1 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls senior officials in India and Pakistan in an effort to defuse the crisis. US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce says Rubio in his call with India expressed sorrow over the killings in Pahalgam and reaffirmed the US’s “commitment to cooperation with India against terrorism."
Pakistan says Rubio emphasized the need for both sides to “continue working together for peace and stability” in South Asia.
May 3 Pakistan test-fires a ballistic missile with a range of 450 kilometers (about 280 miles). Missiles are not fired toward the border area with India; they are normally fired into the Arabian Sea or the deserts of the southwest Balochistan province.
India suspends the exchange of all mail from Pakistan through air and surface routes and bans the direct and indirect import of goods from its neighbor. It also bars Pakistani-flagged ships from entering its ports and prohibits Indian-flagged vessels from visiting Pakistani ports.
May 7 India fires missiles on Pakistan, which calls the strikes an “act of war” and vows to avenge those who died in the pre-dawn attack.
The missiles kill 31 people, including women and children, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the country’s Punjab province. The strikes targeted at least nine sites “where terrorist attacks against India have been planned,” says India’s Defense Ministry.
Pakistan claims it downed several Indian fighter jets.
May 8 India fires attack drones into Pakistan, killing at least two civilians, the Pakistani military says. India, meanwhile, accuses its neighbor of attempting its own attack and acknowledges targeting its archrival’s air defense system.
India evacuates thousands of people from villages near the highly militarized frontier in the Kashmir region. Flights remain suspended at over two dozen airports across northern and western regions of India.
Pakistan's Punjab province announces the immediate closure of all schools and other educational institutions.
May 9 India suspends its biggest domestic cricket tournament for a week following the escalating military tensions with Pakistan. Pakistan initially says it will move its own domestic T20 tournament to the United Arab Emirates because of the crisis, but then says it will only postpone matches.
Several northern and western Indian states shut schools and other educational institutions.
US Vice President JD Vance says a potential war between India and Pakistan would be “none of our business.”
India's army says drones have been sighted in 26 locations across many areas in Indian states bordering Pakistan and Indian-controlled Kashmir, including the main city of Srinagar. The drones were tracked and engaged, it adds.
The Group of Seven nations, or G7, urge “maximum restraint” from both India and Pakistan, warning that further military escalation poses a serious threat to regional stability.
May 10 Pakistan says India has fired missiles at air bases inside the country and that retaliatory strikes are underway. The Indian missiles targeted Nur Khan air base in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, Murid air base in Chakwal city, and Rafiqui air base in the Jhang district of eastern Punjab province, according to the Pakistani army's chief spokesperson.
Pakistan says it has fired missiles at Indian military positions.
Residents in Indian-controlled Kashmir report hearing loud explosions at multiple places in the region, including Srinagar, Jammu, and the garrison town of Udhampur.



The US and Iran Have Had Bitter Relations for Decades. After the Bombs, a New Chapter Begins

Iran's and US' flags are seen printed on paper in this illustration taken January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran's and US' flags are seen printed on paper in this illustration taken January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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The US and Iran Have Had Bitter Relations for Decades. After the Bombs, a New Chapter Begins

Iran's and US' flags are seen printed on paper in this illustration taken January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran's and US' flags are seen printed on paper in this illustration taken January 27, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Now comes a new chapter in US-Iran relations, whether for the better or the even worse.

For nearly a half century, the world has witnessed an enmity for the ages — the threats, the plotting, the poisonous rhetoric between the “Great Satan” of Iranian lore and the “Axis of Evil” troublemaker of the Middle East, in America's eyes, The Associated Press reported.

Now we have a US president saying, of all things, “God bless Iran.”

This change of tone, however fleeting, came after the intense US bombing of Iranian nuclear-development sites this week, Iran's retaliatory yet restrained attack on a US military base in Qatar and the tentative ceasefire brokered by President Donald Trump in the Israel-Iran war.

The US attack on three targets inflicted serious damage but did not destroy them, a US intelligence report found, contradicting Trump's assertion that the attack “obliterated” Iran's nuclear program.

Here are some questions and answers about the long history of bad blood between the two countries:

Why did Trump offer blessings all around? In the first blush of a ceasefire agreement, even before Israel and Iran appeared to be fully on board, Trump exulted in the achievement. “God bless Israel,” he posted on social media. “God bless Iran.” He wished blessings on the Middle East, America and the world, too.

When it became clear that all hostilities had not immediately ceased after all, he took to swearing instead.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing,” he said on camera.

In that moment, Trump was especially critical of Israel, the steadfast US ally, for seeming less attached to the pause in fighting than the country that has been shouting “Death to America” for generations and is accused of trying to assassinate him.

Why did US-Iran relations sour in the first place? In two words, Operation Ajax.

That was the 1953 coup orchestrated by the CIA, with British support, that overthrew Iran's democratically elected government and handed power to the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Western powers had feared the rise of Soviet influence and the nationalization of Iran's oil industry.

The shah was a strategic US ally who repaired official relations with Washington. But grievances simmered among Iranians over his autocratic rule and his bowing to America's interests.

All of that boiled over in 1979 when the shah fled the country and the theocratic revolutionaries took control, imposing their own hard line.

How did the Iranian revolution deepen tensions? Profoundly.

On Nov. 4, 1979, with anti-American sentiment at a fever pitch, Iranian students took 66 American diplomats and citizens hostage and held more than 50 of them in captivity for 444 days.

It was a humiliating spectacle for the United States and President Jimmy Carter, who ordered a secret rescue mission months into the Iran hostage crisis. In Operation Eagle Claw, eight Navy helicopters and six Air Force transport planes were sent to rendezvous in the Iranian desert. A sand storm aborted the mission and eight service members died when a helicopter crashed into a C-120 refueling plane.

Diplomatic ties were severed in 1980 and remain broken.

Iran released the hostages minutes after Ronald Reagan's presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981. That was just long enough to ensure that Carter, bogged in the crisis for over a year, would not see them freed in his term.

Was this week's US attack the first against Iran? No. But the last big one was at sea.

On April 18, 1988, the US Navy sank two Iranian ships, damaged another and destroyed two surveillance platforms in its largest surface engagement since World War II. Operation Praying Mantis was in retaliation against the mining of the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf four days earlier. Ten sailors were injured and the explosion left a gaping hole in the hull.

Did the US take sides in the Iran-Iraq war? Not officially, but essentially.

The US provided economic aid, intelligence sharing and military-adjacent technology to Iraq, concerned that an Iranian victory would spread instability through the region and strain oil supplies. Iran and Iraq emerged from the 1980-1988 war with no clear victor and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, while US-Iraq relations fractured spectacularly in the years after.

What was the Iran-Contra affair? An example of US-Iran cooperation of sorts — an illegal, and secret, one until it wasn't.

Not long after the US designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984 — a status that remains — it emerged that America was illicitly selling arms to Iran. One purpose was to win the release of hostages in Lebanon under the control of Iran-backed Hezbollah. The other was to raise secret money for the Contra rebels in Nicaragua in defiance of a US ban on supporting them.

President Ronald Reagan fumbled his way through the scandal but emerged unscathed — legally if not reputationally.

How many nations does the US designate as state sponsors of terrorism? Only four: Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Syria.

The designation makes those countries the target of broad sanctions. Syria's designation is being reviewed in light of the fall of Bashar Assad’s government.

Where did the term ‘Axis of Evil’ come from? From President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address. He spoke five months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the year before he launched the invasion of Iraq on the wrong premise that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

He singled out Iran, North Korea and Saddam's Iraq and said: “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”

In response, Iran and some of its anti-American proxies and allies in the region took to calling their informal coalition an Axis of Resistance at times.

What about those proxies and allies? Some, like Hezbollah and Hamas, are degraded due to Israel's fierce and sustained assault on them. In Syria, Assad fled to safety in Moscow after losing power to opposition factions once tied to al-Qaida but now cautiously welcomed by Trump.

In Yemen, Houthi militants who have attacked commercial ships in the Red Sea and pledged common cause with Palestinians have been bombed by the US and Britain. In Iraq, armed Shia factions controlled or supported by Iran still operate and attract periodic attacks from the United States.

What about Iran's nuclear program? In 2015, President Barack Obama and other powers struck a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear development in return for the easing of sanctions. Iran agreed to get rid of an enriched uranium stockpile, dismantle most centrifuges and give international inspectors more access to see what it was doing.

Trump assailed the deal in his 2016 campaign and scrapped it two years later as president, imposing a "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions. He argued the deal only delayed the development of nuclear weapons and did nothing to restrain Iran's aggression in the region. Iran's nuclear program resumed over time and, according to inspectors, accelerated in recent months.

Trump's exit from the nuclear deal brought a warning from Hassan Rouhani, then Iran's president, in 2018: “America must understand well that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace. And war with Iran is the mother of all wars.”

How did Trump respond to Iran's provocations? In January 2020, Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, Iran's top commander, when he was in Iraq.

Then Iran came after him, according to President Joe Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland. Days after Trump won last year's election, the Justice Department filed charges against an Iranian man believed to still be in his country and two alleged associates in New York.

“The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump," Garland said.

Now, Trump is seeking peace at the table after ordering bombs dropped on Iran, and offering blessings.

It is potentially the mother of all turnarounds.