Pakistan likes to dangle nuclear bogey to get the world excited, Tharoor says in Washington

There was no significant risk that the recent fighting between India and Pakistan, following the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, was approaching a nuclear threshold, according to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.

“I think what happened was so far short of anything remotely approaching a nuclear threshold that the proposition, frankly, is laughable,” he said at a discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC on Thursday (June 5, 2025).

Mr Tharoor, who heads the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, is leading a multi-party delegation of lawmakers and former Ambassadors on a diplomatic outreach tour of Guyana, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, and the US.

Seven such delegations have been dispatched around the world following the armed conflict between India and Pakistan in early May.

“Our Pakistani friends, I think, like to dangle this nuclear bogey to get all of you excited and anxious,” he said, when asked if the conflict came close to a nuclear war and if nuclear brinkmanship was to be expected in the future.

“We’ve got a nuclear power engaged in the war right now for two-and-a-half years in Europe, and no one has talked about nukes yet,” he said, asking why there was such a discussion just after a few days of fighting in India.

[Mr. Tharoor was presumably referring to the Russia-Ukraine war which began in February 2022. There have been repeated discussions about and reporting on the risk of Russia using nuclear weapons].

Mr. Tharoor urged people not to worry about India using nuclear weapons, as he emphasised India’s “no first use” policy and Pakistan’s lack of one.

India’s response via Operation Sindoor and the subsequent fighting with Pakistan was “calibrated retribution” (for the attack in Pahalgam) and did not pose an existential threat to Pakistan, he said.