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« It’s a pity both sides can’t lose, » Henry Kissinger (in)famously quipped in 1988 about the Iran-Iraq War but he might be saying the same thing from the afterlife about the fight now brewing between Iran and Pakistan.
Early Thursday, the Pakistani Air Force hit « militant hideouts » in Iran with multiple airstrikes, reportedly killing nine. A statement from Islamabad’s foreign ministry described the attack as « a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes. » That’s Pakistani-speak for « we lobbed bombs in the general direction of the enemy. » Really, Thursday’s airstrikes were in retaliation for Iranian missile attacks on similar « militant hideouts » in Pakistan on Tuesday — but stick a pin in that detail because I’ll get back to it in a moment.
The local advocacy group HalVash « shared videos showing a mud-walled building destroyed and smoke rising over the strike immediately after, » according to the AP, which in that neighborhood could have been anything from just a mud-walled building to a mud-walled building sheltering terrorists.
In between the tit-for-tat strikes, Islamabad recalled its ambassador from Tehran and sent Iran’s ambassador in Islamabad packing.
