The 2025 India–Pakistan clash assessment is John Kiriakou’s answer to a Pakistani questioner who asked which side came out better from that year’s confrontation between the two countries.[1]
The declared bias
Kiriakou began by admitting his bias at the outset. He loved every second that he lived in Pakistan — the people, the food, the history and the culture — and says he even dreamt about the country after he had returned to the United States.[2]
He extends the admission to the substance of the dispute, saying he is also biased in favour of Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. His characterisation of the two states is that India is far larger, far wealthier and, in his own personal view, more belligerent than Pakistan.[2]
The judgement
That India went right to the brink again — just as it did in 2002 — is, in Kiriakou’s reading, a testament to the fact that the Pakistanis do not back down despite the deck being stacked against them.[3]
His conclusion follows as an economy of scale, in his phrase, rather than a decisive result: the Indians accomplished nothing in the last go-around and the Pakistanis lost nothing, so he would say the Pakistanis came out slightly ahead.[3] They certainly did not lose anything, and the Indians, he says, proved again that try as they might they cannot cow the Pakistanis.[3][4]
The same questioner invited him to Islamabad or Karachi, and Kiriakou accepted the sentiment warmly.[5] His view of the country’s intelligence service, which he served alongside in Pakistan, is set out separately in the ISI as two organizations.