Delhi blast underscores India’s escalating terror threat despite security gains

On November 9, 2025, the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad arrested three suspects, including one educated in China, for allegedly plotting a chemical weapons attack. Security forces arrested five others from Jaish-e-Mohammed and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind in Kashmir and Haryana, seizing 2,900 kg of explosives. These counterterror successes followed the September 15, 2025, arrest of an Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) operative in September in Uttar Pradesh. It was not enough. An explosion rocked Delhi on Monday evening not far from the Red Fort, killing at least 13; the death toll may even rise.

The attack in Delhi was not the first, nor will it be the last. On May 13, 2008, multiple bombs ripped across Jaipur, killing dozens and injuring more than 200. Later that year, gunmen rampaged through Mumbai, hunting both tourists and Indians. The number of terrorist attacks India suffers today is more than an order of magnitude higher than it experienced in the early 1980s. India weathered many attacks, but the 2019 Pulwama bombing and the 2025 Pahalgam attacks stood out for the shock to society and the nature of India’s response.

There is no secret about the nexus of most of the terror groups that strike India. All roads lead to Islamabad. Many of the suspects involved in planning the 2008 Mumbai attacks remain at large in Pakistan, where they receive protection. Nor should such complicity in terror be news to the outside world. After all, the same Pakistani officials who host anti-India terrorists also sheltered Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who killed nearly three thousand innocents on September 11, 2001, to protect him from an international manhunt.

It is clear that India is facing a grave and growing terror threat. Its causes are twofold, and both outside India’s control. First, as India thrives, its rivals seek to tear it down. India today has the fourth-largest economy and will likely surpass Germany to become the third-largest economy by 2028. If India were able to better reform its stifling bureaucracy, there is no telling how far its economy could grow.

Put another way, if only 20 per cent of Indians were educated and middle class, they would still represent a greater population than all of Pakistan. In reality, 90 per cent of Indians are above the international extreme poverty rate, perhaps 35 per cent middle class, and 81 per cent literate. Middle-class Pakistanis represent approximately the same proportion, but only 60 per cent of the country is literate, and 45 per cent live below the poverty line. India outranks Pakistan on Transparency International’s corruption perception index.

Second, India is majority Hindu. This should not be a problem; after all, Hindus have the same democratic rights as everyone else, and so the fact that India has had Hindu prime ministers should be no more shocking than the fact that the United States has only had Christian presidents. The Islamist supremacism and revivalism promoted by international figures like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Jamaat-e-Islami chief Hafiz Naeemur Rehman, and preacher Zakir Naik rejects the idea that non-Muslims can rule over Muslims, even if their leadership is democratically legitimate.

Here, the parallels between India and Israel become acute. The reason for Pakistani, Turkish and Muslim Brotherhood rejection of India rests in its non-Muslim leadership, just as the reason for Palestinian and Hamas rejection of Israel rests in its status as a Jewish state.

Indian security, like Israel’s, is among the best in the world. As the recent arrests show, India is constantly under assault but manages to foil terrorist plots most of the time. This does not help the victims of the Delhi car bombing, though. The same pattern holds true with Israel. Whether it is foiling 90 per cent of Palestinian attacks or shooting down 90 per cent of drones and missiles, some will always get through.

For too long, Israel’s military adopted a strategy of “mowing the lawn”. Operating in the West Bank or Gaza was exceedingly difficult, and Jerusalem did not want to get bogged down in urban combat or protracted warfare. The idea was simple: Conduct surgical counter-terror operations against terror leaders, weapons depots, or bomb factories. Usually, such an operation could bring a semblance of security for two or three years until the “grass” regrew, and then the cycle would repeat. That worked for years, arguably decades, until the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis and foreigners.

The issue was not simply that terrorists got lucky; rather, it was both that Israel grew complacent and that Hamas became accustomed to Israel’s strategy and worked to change its own tactics.

The same pattern will hold true with India. Pulwama marked the beginning of India’s efforts to mow the lawn in Pakistan. In its aftermath, India flew 12 Indian Air Force jets across the Line of Control to bomb Jaish-e-Mohammed camps and facilities near Balakot, Pakistan. The brazen attack into Pakistan shocked officials in Islamabad and forced them to impose a modicum of control and restraint for several years. Until terrorists struck again. India’s attacks after Pahalgam went further, destroying Pakistani military bases and airfields, Pakistani unconvincing denials notwithstanding. Once again, the shock created quiet, until the Delhi blast, an attack that could have been much worse and widespread had not Indian anti-terrorism services been so vigilant.

The Delhi attack shows status quo counterterrorism does not work. India cannot simply mow the lawn like Israel did, for Pakistani weeds grow much faster than even Palestinian ones do. India needs to respond overwhelmingly against terrorists, wherever they may be. Western diplomats may hand-wring about transnational repression, but they are wrong. Terrorists are not dissidents; confusing the two delegitimises real dissidents. As for terrorists, there can be no safe haven, whether in Canada, the United States, Turkey, or Pakistan.

India must neutralise not only terrorists but also anyone who empowers them, even if they wear a politician’s suit or a Pakistani general’s uniform. After all, when a murderer kills an innocent, police will charge not only the perpetrator but also the man who gave him the gun and the criminal network that paid him to do it; all are equally guilty.

India’s External Affairs Ministry must make the terror designation of Pakistan its top diplomatic priority in the United States, Europe, and even among moderate Arab states. Indeed, a willingness to approach terrorism with moral clarity should be the litmus test for any nationality that seeks to invest in India’s booming economy. If China can leverage its economic influence, why should India not do so?

Pakistan may bluster about its nuclear capability, but it knows that it is the aggressor, and the way for it to save face is simply to stop supporting terror in the first place. Terrorism is a tactic driven by a cost-benefit analysis. Delhi must now show Islamabad that its continued sponsorship of terror will bring with it a cost which it cannot bear.  The alternative—more grass mowing—is neither diplomatically responsible nor will it bring peace; rather, like Israel and Hamas, it will only allow terror groups to continue increasing their capabilities until they can stage an attack that will kill thousands if not more.

(Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)