"Congratulations to both countries on using common sense and great intelligence," US President Donald Trump wrote on his social media platform on Saturday.
It was 5:25 pm IST when Trump broke what few had expected: India and Pakistan had agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire.
Minutes later, New Delhi and Islamabad confirmed that this was indeed true.
Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar posted on X confirming the truce, while India's Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri read out a statement that a cessation of military operations had taken effect from 5 pm.
But how did the Saturday surprise come about?
Quiet backchannel negotiations and parleys, it can now be confirmed, had begun even as public tensions soared between the nuclear-powered neighbours.
America's top diplomat, Marco Rubio, revealed that he and Vice President JD Vance had spent over two days in talks with senior officials from India and Pakistan.
A CNN report, citing senior Trump administration sources, reveals that a small circle of top US officials — including Vance, Rubio, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — had been closely tracking the crisis and that "alarming intelligence" had reached the US by Friday morning.
The report adds that though officials declined to detail the intelligence, describing it as "highly sensitive", the information was pivotal in convincing the trio that Washington needed to step up its involvement.
Vance, who was in India during the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack and had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi the day before at his residence, took the lead in reaching out.
According to CNN, he briefed Trump on the urgency of the situation before calling Modi at noon (Eastern Time US) on Friday. The vice president is said to have conveyed the administration's assessment that the situation could spiral rapidly over the weekend unless decisive steps were taken.
Curiously, just a day earlier, Vance had told a TV news network that the US "had no business" intervening in the conflict — even as Washington had already been working behind the scenes and had stepped up its involvement since Friday after intelligence cited a "high probability of dramatic escalation" over the weekend.
Although the official ceasefire was triggered by a Saturday afternoon call (around 3:35 pm IST) from Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations to his Indian counterpart, CNN reported that it was Vance who urged Modi to open a direct line of communication with Islamabad and explore de-escalation measures. He reportedly presented Modi with a "potential off-ramp"—one the US believed Pakistan might accept.
In addition, Rubio spoke with Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir, the key powerbroker in Islamabad. Rubio "emphasised that both sides need to identify methods to de-escalate and re-establish direct communication to avoid miscalculation," the State Department said.
Meanwhile, senior ministers from Iran and Saudi Arabia visited both countries in recent days, intensifying diplomatic pressure on both sides to de-escalate. And along with them Türkiye sought US to mediate.
And on Saturday, after four days of cross-border shelling, precision airstrikes, and drone incursions — targeting terrorist and military sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and military and civilian infrastructure in India — tensions that had escalated since the Pahalgam terror attack finally began to cool down.
While global calls for restraint continued, mediation by the US and diplomatic efforts from Gulf states had become essential.
'A new playbook'
"What we're seeing now is unprecedented. We have not seen these types of attacks before — missiles, drones, planes sent over populated cities," said Abdul Basit, a senior associate fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
"It's a new playbook," said Basit, with mediators needed to "help with the victory narrative for both sides" in order to de-escalate.
"In this case, emotions and mistrust are so high that international mediation will be of the essence," said Michael Kugelman, a Washington DC-based South Asia analyst.
"There's still no clear path to an off ramp," he added.
The role of Gulf countries and the IMF loan carrot
Speaking to The New Indian Express, strategic expert and former director and chairman, Gulf Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Aftab Kamal Pasha underlined the role of Saudi Arabia and Turkiye among others in securing the peace.
"The ceasefire was a result of pressure from the Gulf countries and Türkiye, who started viewing Pakistan as an irrational actor in the conflict with India. They feared that if pushed to the wall, Pakistan could even use nuclear tactical weapons against India and the situation could get out of hand," he said.
"The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Türkiye approached President Donald Trump seeking US mediation to end the hostilities between India and Pakistan immediately. The conflict was already escalating and could have taken a dangerous turn if they all didn’t intervene, was their belief."
"Trump stepped in and asked both the countries to end the conflict immediately. The US, which was holding back the IMF (International Monetary Fund) loan to Pakistan for long, may have agreed to disburse it on Friday on the condition that they would agree to a ceasefire with India. The economic condition in Pakistan is in shambles, and the growing unrest among the people there because of this must have made them agree to this," explained Professor Pasha.
But then what the mediators might have failed to factor in were the differences in opinion that exist between the civilian and military leadership when it came to the ceasefire.
"The uneasy relationship between them means the military leadership will thwart any attempt by the civilian government to end hostility with India and threaten to dislodge it. The ball is now in India's court. Will we respond appropriately to the ceasefire violation, or will we wait for US intervention? It is a delicate situation either way for India," he went on to underline.
