To all my blackpiller friends,
India did get played. I'll accept that. Pakistanio ke liye Maharana Pratap ki "don't fight an enemy who has surrendered" wale ideals nahi chalte. From what it looks like, the USA might not have brokered the deal, but they certainly did force us to figure out some kind of end to the conflict IMMEDIATELY.
Now, having gone over the MEA briefing, it is obvious that our Babus at least thought that was a done deal. And the briefing was also quite out of character because India hasn't been the one doing erratic late-hour press briefings since the start of the conflict.
My current analysis of the situation is that this MEA press briefing was a stop-gap measure to officially let the world know what a failure the USA's "ceasefire" deal was, and to indicate that India ISN'T the hostile side in the conflict, BUT the Indian Armed Forces will not be de-escalating. Remember, for the current Gov, optics matter quite a bit. At no point does GoI want to look like it's being disproportionately aggressive. Hence the standard "committed to de-escalation" punchline. We were waiting to see what optics were presented by Pakistan, and now that Shahbaz Sharif has claimed victory, the countdown for Indian kinetic action has started again. The halt in the conflict for 2-3 hours has to have rendered some time-sensitive intelligence useless. So, it might not be an immediate engagement of their airbases on provocation tonight like it was the last couple of nights. But this certainly isn't the end of the conflict. Modi took all parties into confidence before stepping on the kinetic escalation ladder. If he gives in now, especially AFTER Omar Abdullah tweeted about the blasts, he knows that his political popularity will be buried alive by his political contemporaries. Not just opposition but also his party men.
Something is certainly gonna happen. Activate the Naval front? Land incursion? Go back and finish the damaged airbases? We don't know yet, but something of this order is certainly gonna happen. There is certainly no "lack of intent" if we bombed 11 of the enemy's most strategic airbases, including in the vicinity of or at nuclear sites.