“We’ll take half the world down with us.” Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, said that, according to guests, at a private dinner in Tampa, Florida, on August 10, 2025, describing what Pakistan would do if it saw an existential threat.
The event was hosted by Adnan Asad, Pakistan’s honorary consul. Reports of the remarks first appeared in The Print, and Hindustan Times and News18 later backed them up, according to Swarajya.
Munir spent much of the evening on India and the Indus Waters Treaty. He said Pakistan would wait for India to build a dam and then destroy it. In the Urdu words attributed to him, “phir 10 missile sey faarigh kar dengey,” which Swarajya renders as “we will destroy it with 10 missiles.” The outlet put the number of Pakistanis potentially left without water at 250 million.
He also reached for an analogy. “India is shining Mercedes coming on a highway like Ferrari, but we are a dump truck full of gravel,” Munir was quoted as saying. “If the truck hits the car, who is going to be the loser?”
The trip was his second to the United States in two months. In June he met President Donald Trump. Indian reaction to the Tampa comments has been sharply critical, Swarajya said.
Home pressures
Analysts cited by the outlet read the remarks as an attempt to build support at home. They pointed to inflation of 12% and foreign reserves that had slipped below $9 billion, citing recent IMF data.
The backdrop
The talk of dams and missiles lands against the memory of this spring. The April 2025 Pahalgam attack on Indian civilians killed 26 people. India answered with Operation Sindoor, a campaign of drone and missile strikes on Pakistani bases. Fighting lasted three days and ended in a ceasefire on May 10, 2025. Swarajya called it the first drone battle between nuclear-armed neighbours.
