Strikes steel PM Modi's iron man credentials

NEW DELHI: Two days after the Pahalgam terror attack, Narendra Modi gave a speech in Madhubani, Bihar. He vowed to "identify, track and punish every terrorist and his backer". In a speech given what turned out to be just hours before Operation Sindoor was launched, he struck a very different note. He touched upon Pakistan's perfidy, but limited himself to talking about pausing the Indus Waters Treaty.That's Modi for you.Little did anyone know that before coming to Tuesday's event organised by a TV network, he had greenlighted the operation. With hindsight, his decision to record his speech for the Global Conference on Space Exploration on Wednesday morning showed he had already decided on the date for the retaliation.It's easy to say now for everyone that a PM who greenlighted surgical strikes after Uri and the bombing of Balakot terror camp after Pulwama was always going to give an answer to Pahalgam. But in the two weeks between Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor, there were many, including opposition leaders, who questioned whether he would okay a kinetic response. More so because pretty much every world leader of any consequence was advising 'restraint'.But not for the first time, Modi upended several people's assumptions. This is the third time he's called Pakistan's nuclear bluff, and the third time he's shown that the earlier Indian govt thinking, summed up in the euphemism 'strategic restraint', was never going to constrain his decisions.Modi was undeterred by pundits' concerns that a desperate Pak army chief, Gen Asim Munir, the maulvi in fatigues, could go to any extent to counter a punitive strike. He also proved wrong those who had reckoned that with the Indian armed forces already stretched thin since the Galwan clash with Chinese forces, and given the fear of China's communist bosses coming to the aid of their all-weather ally Pakistan, he would rein in his natural instinct to hit back harder.The precision strikes, while exposing Pakistan's nuclear blackmail for what it is, plain blackmail, helped him fully regain the 'jo kaha so kiya' plank and 'tough on national security' credentials.The Pahalgam attack, though an aberration considering the successful tackling of terror both within J&K and outside it, had cast a shadow on those credentials. Daily taunts from opposition leaders had demonstrated their willingness to target what they saw as a chink in Modi's armour. The absence of a decisive Indian response would have allowed opposition leaders to take that rhetoric further. The anti-BJP political narrative would have been centered around what the opposition would have termed as Modi's inability to live up to his own belief that India must cross the 'red line' in response to a Pak-sponsored terror outrage.The nine precision strikes have washed away all doubt and with it, the opposition's story. Modi has again ensured that BJP retains the upper hand in security matters. The decision to share videos of the successful strikes involving 'niche' munitions was astute and left little room for quibble.More significantly, Modi also appears to have prepared the country for the longer haul vis-a-vis security threats, boosting its risk appetite: something that was evident in the manner in which people shrugged off Pakistan's claims of losses for IAF and, also, in the way stock markets took the risk of escalation in their stride. This is vital. The task of making India's economy stronger - itself a vital national security advantage - won't be any less urgent even after massively raising Pakistan's cost of terror sponsorship. Modi will helm that job as a PM with even bigger political capital.