Sadanand Dhume on Israeli Arms and the India-Pakistan Conflict: How two democracies found common cause

On April 22, 2025, Islamist terrorists struck Indian civilians in Kashmir. Twenty-six people were killed, most of them Hindu tourists. This attack would trigger what analysts now call the “88-Hour War”—a brief but intense conflict between India and Pakistan that ended only after American diplomatic intervention. This four-day war revealed a shift in the strategic landscape that only decades ago would have been unthinkable. When Indian forces engaged Pakistani positions, they deployed Israeli-made drones. When diplomatic support mattered, Israel stood unambiguously with India. Meanwhile, Pakistan relied heavily on Chinese weapons and Turkish diplomatic backing. The conflicts of the Middle East were being played out on the Indian subcontinent.

On this week’s podcast, Jonathan Silver is joined by Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a June 4 article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Mideast Power Plays in India and Pakistan.” In it, Dhume explains that India—once among Israel’s harshest critics and a reflexive supporter of the Palestinian cause—has become Israel’s largest arms customer, accounting for 34 percent of Israeli weapons exports. That story about arms exports then opens up onto a larger story about how two democracies, each seeing themselves as ancient civilizations facing modern terrorist threats, have found common cause. Silver and Dhume discuss the transformation of Israel-India relations from cold-war hostility to strategic partnership, by focusing on the arms trade between them.