Two major military confrontations made the headlines during the last two months that will redefine warfare under nuclear overhang as a prominent geopolitical feature in the 21st century: a substantial India-Pakistan military clash (May 7-10, 2025) and the intense Iran-Israel conflict (June 13-24, 2025). These conflicts represent more than regional flare-ups; they offer profound insights into how nations navigate conflict beneath a nuclear environment, the evolving role of technology in warfare, growing trends of non-contact warfare, and the fragile nature of deterrence in an increasingly multipolar world.

India miscalculated PAF’s operational and technical prowess, losing 6 top fighters in the opening 60 minutes of conflict.

At the strategic level, both conflicts have validated the stability-instability paradox, according to which nuclear weapons do prevent full-scale war but enable lower-intensity conflicts. Some key patterns emerged, which provide new avenues of research for the strategic studies experts.

• The Corrosion of Absolute Deterrence: Significantly, the proven nuclear arsenal of Pakistan and Iran’s near-nuclear status failed to deter Indian attack on Pakistan and Israeli/U.S. strikes on Iran, exposing the limits of strategic deterrence. As a U.S. weapons expert noted, destroying Iran’s enrichment capabilities added “years to Iran’s timeline for even a non-missile deliverable weapon”. Yet Iran’s retention of enriched uranium stockpiles ensures ongoing tension.
• Calibrated Escalation: Though Israeli strikes on Iran were targeted against alleged nuclear weapons of Tehran, India’s “Operation Sindoor”, on the other hand, claimed to target terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan. In retaliation, both Iran and Pakistan had to hit back at military targets of their respective foes. The inability of Israel and India to back their respective claims enabled Pakistan and Iran to retaliate in self-defense under the UN charter, and this unveiled yet another disturbing emerging trend.
• Erosion of Global Institutions: A Growing trend of short-lived, high-intensity bilateral and multilateral military engagements has eroded the role of traditional diplomacy and weakened global institutions like the UN. Conflict resolution and management have become less likely because countries with greater military asymmetry tend to resolve conflicts according to their strategic interests instead of adhering to global norms and international laws.  Indian attack on Pakistan, Israeli attack on Iran, and later on the inclusion of the US without any UNSC backing vindicate this disturbing fact.

As the dust settles, the data about the outcome of each military campaign from each side offers policymakers and strategists some key critical lessons about changing conventional warfare in a nuclear environment, particularly about aerial warfare, missile defense, covert operations, and the disruptive prowess of AI and ML in warfare. The foremost conclusion of both conflicts is that the strategy alone is no longer the primary driver of conventional deterrence as long as the emerging disruptive technologies are not part of it.

Despite interception claims, Iranian and Pakistani missiles penetrated defenses, causing confirmed damage in Tel Aviv and New Delhi.

In the domain of aerial warfare, Jinnah’s vision vindicated once again, i.e., ‘Any nation without an air force will remain at the mercy of its adversary’, he famously declared in 1948 after witnessing the air power’s dominance during World War II. He advised Pakistan to build an efficient air force that must be second to none. As Pakistan Air Force has always strived to achieve this goal in every era. India miscalculated PAF’s operational and technical prowess on 7^th May 2025’s initial strikes and was caught by surprise when it lost 6 of its top fighters, including Rafale, to PAF’s J-10CE and PL-15 combo in the opening 60 minutes of the conflict.

After this episode, the Indian Air Force avoided manned incursions into Pakistani airspace, instead relying on its standoff weapons like ALCMs (BrahMos and SCALP-EG), which were launched from within Indian territory. Similarly, in the Iran-Israel conflict, Israeli complete air dominance over Iranian airspace ensured a high level of success during the initial phase.  In the subsequent days of the conflict, the Israeli air force continued to hit various targets in Western and Central Iran, including Tehran. Iran, due to prolonged sanctions, couldn’t build an effective air force and had to rely on ballistic missiles in its retaliatory strikes. Pakistan also launched a retaliatory strike against Indian Operation Sindoor on 10^th May 2025, where it used short-range Fatah series rockets.

These employments of ballistic missiles by Iran and Pakistan tested the layered air defenses of India and Israel.  India claims intercepted 80% Pakistani missiles, while Israel demonstrated effectiveness against slow-moving Iranian ballistic missiles and shot down 90% of Iranian missiles, but in both incidents, some of the ballistic missiles did penetrate Israeli and Indian layered air and missile defense, and damage was caused on the ground.

Visual and official confirmation of these damages came from Tel Aviv and New Delhi. Indian BMD system comprises S-400, Barak-8, MRSAM, and Askah missile systems, while Israel enjoys a multi-lateral, multi-layered integrated defense system: Iron Dome (for short-range rockets), David’s Sling (medium-range), and Arrow (long-range ballistic missiles).

Israeli success in interception of Iranian ballistic missiles, however, came at a huge financial cost-up to $2 million per Arrow interceptor. Just like India, despite high interception rates, some Iranian ballistic missiles were still able to penetrate defenses, killing 24 Israelis in Tel Aviv. Though layered integrated air defense systems proved their worth but it was also established that these are not 100 percent impregnable shields.

This was further cemented when India launched air air-launched cruise missile on Pakistani air bases, despite their excellent soft and hard kill capabilities, Pakistani integrated air defense couldn’t prevent every missile from hitting its target, and consequently, Pakistan Air Force had to bear losses like Bohlari where 5 airmen including an officer were martyred.  A conflict in a nuclear environment, including missile exchange as witnessed in these two conflicts, thus poses a serious challenge to regional stability and global peace.

Years of intelligence preparation allowed Mossad to smuggle drones and missiles into Iran, enabling Israeli jets to achieve air superiority.

Strategic decapitation and psychological impact management emerged as a silent game-changing aspect of modern warfare under nuclear overhang. India mounted a midnight aerial and artillery attack on Pakistan without announcing or identifying any single group. It targeted multiple locations across Pakistan belonging to different organizations to maximize the psychological impact of the strikes. Towards the end of the conflict, India tried to target multiple Pakistani military targets to decapitate the Pakistan Air Force and Air Defense despite an earlier announcement of a ceasefire.

These last-hour attacks were more of psychological attacks than anything else to restore some credibility after Pakistan’s punitive Operation Bunyan ul Marsus, in which the Pakistan military targeted more than 2 dozen Indian military bases apart from countless Indian posts on LoC. Both Pakistani and Indian actions were attempts to send a strong psychological message across. Pakistan was able to control the strategic communication and narrative control during the entire conflict. In the case of the Israel-Iran conflict, Israel relied on covert ops during Operation Rising Lion.

Years of intelligence preparation allowed Mossad to smuggle drones and missiles into Iran, positioning them near air defense sites and critical infrastructure. At “zero hour,” operatives activated these assets to cripple Iranian air defenses immediately before aerial strikes, enabling Israeli jets to achieve air superiority. Simultaneously, Mossad cells assassinated 14 nuclear scientists and 20+ senior commanders, including IRGC chiefs Hossein Salami and Mohammad Bagheri.

This fusion of intelligence and special operations delivered strategic surprise despite global anticipation of Israeli action. These actions proved that pre-positioned assets and deep-cover operations can offset numerical inferiority. A few weeks ago, Ukraine used the same tactics to destroy 1/3^rd of the Russian strategic bomber fleet using FPV drones launched from within Russia close to multiple air bases where Russian strategic bombers were stationed.

AI-assisted drone swarms and UCAVs also emerged as a weapon of choice during both these conflicts. These cheaper solutions were employed in numbers in the Indo-Pak conflict to locate, identify, saturate, and destroy air defense assets. India employed Israeli Harop and many home-grown solutions for this purpose, while Pakistan reciprocated the tactics on the Indian side, where Indian air defenses were first saturated by drones and eventually engaged with missiles armed with anti-radiation seekers (S-400 radars were targeted by PAF using CM-400AKG missiles).

Iran and Israel have agreed on a ceasefire. It was also achieved in the Indo-Pakistan case, but the Indian military and political leadership insist that Operation Sindoor is only suspended, not completed. This is an escalatory political stance with grave strategic implications for regional stability and peace in South Asia. India failed to produce even circumstantial evidence linking Pakistan with the  Pehalgam incident and now insists on the dangerous premise that India will resume attacks on Pakistan if there is another terror attack on Indian soil.

Strategic decapitation and psychological warfare proved decisive, more than just missile strikes; they shaped public morale and military credibility.

Indian leadership considers the current conventional asymmetry between Pakistan and India too much tilted in India’s favor, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to give them a decisive advantage in a military conflict against Pakistan. But Pakistan, being a smaller country, has already announced that its nuclear threshold is low compared to India, but if its sovereignty is threatened, it will activate its nuclear options. Pakistan is trying to bridge the conventional gap at least in qualitative terms to deter Indian designs in the future, but with the growing scale of the Indian economy, this is hard to achieve; hence, Pakistan will have to continue to use Minimum Credible Deterrence around the nuclear option.

India’s quest for a conventional conflict with Pakistan under nuclear overhang is strategically misplaced and miscalculated because they are not assessing the possible escalation to nuclear exchange and the possibility that where stability-instability paradox will not work anymore. For Pakistan only option to prevent any such eventuality is to ensure that its conventional deterrence is based on qualitative superiority in particularly in air power, missile force, and missile defense systems, proactive diplomacy, and aggressively engaging India on legal forums like the ICJ about Indian allegations of terrorism.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.