earlier, i also spoke to madiha afzal. i asked earlier, i also spoke to madiha afzal.zal. i asked her why she thought iran was compelled to attack pakistan. this seems to have come as a surprise to pakistan. it was a unilateral strike that took pakistan's political class by surprise and angered it. iran may be trying to show its assertiveness in the region, in the post—october 7 time frame. and the strike in pakistan was just one of the strikes it's undertaken. it's something unrelated to the other strikes. in this — it's responding not to any immediate attack on its territory, by this balochistan militant group it struck in pakistan, but attacks in the past. and it's the most proximate attack that took place was in early january, where, you know, dozens of iranianance —— iranians were killed, but that's not by this militant group. the response it undertook the iraq and syria was related to that, the response in pakistan seems to have been bundled by that. taking advantage of pakistan's own internal turmoil to also bundle the strike in the set of strikes this week. it

madiha afzal is a fellow in the foreign policy programme at brookings, the author of "pakistan undere". and i asked her why she thought iran was compelled to attack pakistan. i think this seems to have come as a surprise to pakistan. and it was a unilateral strike that seems to have taken pakistan's at least political class and public by surprise and angered it. i think iran may be trying to show its assertiveness in the region. in the post october 7th timeframe and the strike in pakistan was just one of the strikes that's undertaken, it's somewhat unrelated to the other strikes it's undertaken. and in this, it's responding not to any immediate attack on its territory by this baluch militant group that it struck in pakistan. but attacks in the past and it's the most proximate attack that that took place was in early january where, you know, dozens of iranians were killed. but that was not by this militant group. but and so that's the response that it undertook in iraq and syria was related to that. the response in pakistan seems to just have been bundled with that, taking advantage,