On April 22nd, 2025, Islamist terrorists struck Indian civilians in Kashmir.

26 people were killed, most of them Hindu tourists.

This attack would trigger what scholars and analysts now call the 88-hour war, a brief but

intense conflict between India and Pakistan that ended only after American intervention.

Today's discussion is not really about that four-day war, it's about what the conflict

revealed, a shift in the strategic landscape that only decades ago would have been nigh 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.

Welcome to the Tikfoot podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.

Today we look at how Israel-India relations have transformed from Cold War hostility to

strategic partnership by focusing on the arms trade between them. My guest is

Sadanand Dume of the American Enterprise Institute. His June 4th article in the Wall Street Journal,

Mid-East power plays in India and Pakistan, is our point of departure. In it, Dumay 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% of Israeli weapons exports.

But 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.

If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts,

Google Play, Spotify.

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