Why Gulf States, More Than the U.S., Are Key to Prevent War Between India and Pakistan

The crisis embroiling India and Pakistan continues to spiral. Pakistan’s military claims to have killed 40 to 50 Indian troops along their de facto border in Kashmir and downed 29 Indian drones during Thursday night and Friday morning, in response to India striking multiple locations in Pakistan on Wednesday that it claimed were “terrorist camps.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The current unrest was sparked by last month’s deadly terrorist attack on tourists in the India-controlled part of the restive region of Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead. New Delhi has pinned the bloodshed on Islamabad, which denies complicity and called for an independent investigation. But with both sides blaming the other for every escalation, full blown war appears worryingly close.

On Thursday, Pakistani Army Chief General Ashi Munir stood atop a tank during a military exercise to address his troops. “Let there be no ambiguity,” he said. “Any military misadventure by India will be met with a swift, resolute, and notch-up response.”

For Bharat Karnad, an emeritus professor in national security studies at New Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research, everything rests on Munir, who’s “something of a hot head,” he says. “He’s a Quranic literalist, one of the true believers, who’s spoken about Ghazwa-e-Hind,” referring to a holy war against India mentioned in the Hadith.

Conversely, Fawad Chaudhry, a former Information Minister under Pakistani ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan, believes Indian leader Narendra Modi is the chief villain and set on redrawing the boundaries in Kashmir to secure his legacy in the face of plummeting poll numbers.

“He wants to be a bigger leader than Gandhi or Nehru,” Fawad tells TIME. “So I think he will actually expand the theater of war.”

The specter of two nuclear-armed foes once again trading blows over disputed territory that they have already waged two wars over has naturally alarmed the international community. On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “a military solution is no solution.”

On the last two occasions that India and Pakistan clashed significantly over Kashmir, in 2016 and 2019, the U.S. played a key role in deescalating tensions. However, today’s Trump administration is taking a hands-off approach, with Vice President J.D. Vance telling Fox News that the spat was “fundamentally none of our business.”

“The Pakistanis don’t have that ‘out’ that they used to have of relying on Washington to ride in like the cavalry to save them,” says Karnad.

So, we’re all screwed then? Not so fast. Into the fray is instead galloping an unlikely arbitrator: Gulf States, in particular Saudi Arabia, who are today playing a key though unfamiliar peace-making role.

On Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir made a surprise visit to India to meet External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and help broker a climbdown. Peace is clearly in Riyadh’s interests, given Saudi Arabia currently hosts some 2.6 million Indians working alongside a similar cohort of Pakistanis. After all, when the Kashmir attack unfolded, Modi was in Jeddah to discuss the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor and advance an investment deal worth $100 billion.

“Gulf states by the nature of their relationships with Pakistan and India are going to become more active in urging the two states to exercise restraint,” says Samina Yasmeen, director of the Centre for Muslim States and Societies at the University of Western Australia. “It’s in their interest to make sure that the region is stable.”

Still, it’s a remarkable transformation for Saudi Arabia in particular, which has long been the world’s preeminent exporter of Islamist terrorism. From financing 9/11 to waging war against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen to the torture and murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the kingdom has been an undeniably destabilizing presence.

However, regional dynamics have shifted in recent years. The Gulf’s swelling economic and diplomatic clout has corresponded with interests replacing ideology as the chief driver of foreign policy, as illustrated by the remarkable (though ultimately aborted) negotiations toward the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

At any rate, the historic Great Powers are no longer the sole repositories of global influence. Other than the Saudis, nations like Qatar and the UAE are filling the vacuum. Rather than fanning the flames by backing fellow Islamic state Pakistan in the ongoing crisis, Qatar and the UAE both urged restraint. Doha even went so far as to back New Delhi in the spat, at least according to an Indian readout.

Still, things are complicated. China remains a key investment and security partner of Pakistan, and it was Chinese J-10C fighters armed with its PL-15 missiles that shot down five Indian Air Force jets on Wednesday. In addition, China is another claimant in disputed Kashmir, controlling two slivers of the territory adjacent to its border.

“China cannot remain aloof from this conflict,” says Chaudhry. “Any territorial adjustment by India will not be acceptable to China. That’s not for Pakistan—that’s for China’s own interests.”

But the fact that it is interests, rather than values or ideology, that are ultimately driving all regional actors marks a distinct departure from orthodoxy. For a long time, Pakistan clung to the idea that as a Muslim state, it had a higher claim of loyalty from the Gulf compared to India. Today, however, despite religious differences and divergent value systems, India has emerged as a very significant actor in the Gulf.

“It’s not the strict alignments that we saw in the Cold War era,” says Yasmeen “It’s a more fluid situation in which all these countries—India, Pakistan, included—try and explore what they can get from other parties.”

Iran, for example, is a fellow Muslim nation that shares a border with Pakistan, which itself hosts a large Shia population. Yet Iran is arguably on better terms with India than Pakistan these days. Tehran has expressed “heartfelt condolences” to India over the Kashmir terrorist attack. On Wednesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister visited New Delhi just hours after leaving Islamabad and offered to help deescalate tensions. Like many nations across the Gulf, India has significant interests in Iran, including a long-standing agreement to develop and operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal at Chabahar Port, including a $120 million investment and a $250 million credit line for infrastructure development.

Ultimately, no regional actors want another India-Pakistan war. Still, analysts fear that a Rubicon may have been crossed.

One burning issue is Modi’s suspension of the Indus Water Treaty that governs water flows south to Pakistan and his desire to renegotiate it for India’s benefit.

And on April 24 Pakistan suspended the 1972 Shimla Agreement, which essentially means Kashmir’s Line of Control—the de facto border—reverts to merely a ceasefire frontier. Under international law, a ceasefire line can be changed to the advantage of either party by military means. “A psychological barrier has been breached,” says Karnad. “Now the Indian military has legal sanction to do more than just destroy a few tanks, gun positions, and then go back.”

It all means that even if careful diplomacy provides an off-ramp to current tensions, there will be no quick fix and constant, earnest mediation will be necessary to keep things from boiling going forward.

“A lot now depends on whether Saudi Arabia will exert pressure on India,” says Fawad. “Otherwise, war is imminent.”