{"id":349,"date":"2026-06-03T13:45:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T13:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=349"},"modified":"2026-06-03T13:45:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T13:45:26","slug":"how-pakistan-is-using-the-iran-war-to-reinvent-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=349","title":{"rendered":"How Pakistan Is Using the Iran War to Reinvent Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On New Year\u2019s Day of 2018, Donald Trump, like previous American Presidents, was fed up with Pakistan. \u201cThe United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,\u201d Trump tweeted, \u201cand they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!\u201d Three days later, the U.S. cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Islamabad.<\/p>\n

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In Trump\u2019s second term, the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan has shifted once again: today, Islamabad is helping Trump find a way out of a self-made crisis with Iran\u2014a war that has convulsed the global economy and weakened the Republican Party going into the midterm elections. As the primary mediator between Washington and Tehran, Pakistan has earned newfound credibility as a peace broker and a security partner, accomplishing what no other country or international body has been able to do: hosting the first high-level, face-to-face meetings between Iran and the U.S. in more than a decade.<\/p>\n

Pakistan was in desperate need of a reputational rehabilitation. The country, which is largely run by its military, is wrestling with political and economic instability, marked by increasing government repression, terrorism, domestic insurgencies, and huge debts. The same military steering the diplomatic efforts between the U.S. and Iran led the campaign for the imprisonment of the nation\u2019s former Prime Minister Imran Khan\u2014a move that has been widely condemned by the United Nations and international human-rights bodies. Pakistan is also in the middle of its own war with the Taliban in Afghanistan\u2014a group that Islamabad once cultivated and supported\u2014while tensions with India, its main regional enemy, remain high. \u201cEven if the talks were to collapse, and there was not a deal, Pakistan will still be a winner,\u201d Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, told me. \u201cIt\u2019s a remarkable turnaround, because it does appear to have evolved from something close to a pariah to a peacemaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pakistan\u2019s emergence as a mediator of the U.S.-Iran war illustrates how diplomacy has become more personal and transactional under Trump. By catering to his ego, international leaders can persuade Washington to forget\u2014or at least to ignore\u2014past tensions. Orchestrating this new d\u00e9tente for Pakistan is Field Marshal Asim Munir, the country\u2019s Army chief and its most powerful figure, who has forged close ties with Trump. \u201cThe Pakistanis, like others, have figured out how the game is played with Trump, and they have played it extremely well,\u201d Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, told me. \u201cDo things he likes, flatter him shamelessly, present an image he likes. It helps if you\u2019re a strongman wearing a uniform. Pakistan had the cards, and they just played them very well in terms of timing and substance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For decades, Pakistan and the U.S. had a highly strained, yet symbiotic, relationship. Islamabad has long been wary of U.S. goals and promises, especially since America abandoned Pakistan after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, in 1989. Having achieved its geopolitical objectives, Washington reduced the military and economic aid it had provided in exchange for Pakistan\u2019s support of the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen. Pakistan was left to deal with the fallout from the Afghan civil war that followed, which included accepting nearly four million Afghan refugees. To stabilize its neighbor and establish a Pakistan-friendly government, Pakistan\u2019s powerful intelligence agency, the I.S.I., helped create and nurture the Taliban, which seized control of Afghanistan for the first time in 1996.<\/p>\n

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After the September 11th attacks and the subsequent overthrow of the Taliban, Islamabad became a vital counterterrorism partner. But U.S. military and intelligence officials soon accused Pakistan of playing a double game: even as it received billions in U.S. military aid, Islamabad maintained covert ties with the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other militants fighting U.S. troops, providing them with bases and sanctuaries inside Pakistan, a claim that Islamabad has long denied. The policy was driven largely by a desire to hedge against India\u2019s growing influence over the government in Kabul. Pakistan, for its part, accused Washington of its own duplicity, relying on Pakistan as a partner to fight terrorism, yet never fully backing the country in its conflicts with India.<\/p>\n

In 2011, during Barack Obama\u2019s Presidency, U.S.-Pakistani relations hit a new low. That year, U.S. Special Forces found and killed Osama bin Laden at his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan\u2014an operation that the American government staged without informing Islamabad, which was accused of knowingly harboring bin Laden. John Brennan, Obama\u2019s chief counterterrorism adviser, said at a press conference that it was \u201cinconceivable\u201d that bin Laden did not benefit from a \u201csupport system\u201d in Pakistan. Pakistani leaders denied the allegations, but two months later the Obama Administration suspended eight hundred million dollars in military aid, one-third of its yearly assistance to Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Despite these periods of hostility and mutual suspicion, however, the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan has endured out of strategic necessity. Even after bin Laden\u2019s death, Pakistan remained a key gateway for U.S. and NATO<\/em> troops and supplies to enter Afghanistan. Islamabad and Washington shared intelligence that led to the capture of Al Qaeda leaders and militants, especially those who threatened the Pakistani state. Pakistan also played a behind-the-scenes role in facilitating peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban. \u201cThis is a relationship which has had ups and downs throughout its history,\u201d Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States, told me. \u201cThe downs haven\u2019t lasted long; the ups have lasted fairly long.\u201d After Trump\u2019s tweet in 2018, Pakistan\u2019s National Security Committee wrote that the post \u201cnegated the decades of sacrifices made by the Pakistani nation,\u201d including tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers who died as a result of the U.S.-Pakistani alliance. Lodhi, who was then Pakistan\u2019s Ambassador to the U.N., told me that she and other top leaders in the country met with Trump and forged \u201ca rapprochement.\u201d But the relationship didn\u2019t return to normal. Most of the U.S. military aid was not restored; when Joe Biden took office, his Administration treated the country \u201cwith a kind of strategic indifference, as if Pakistan mattered only when there was a crisis to be managed,\u201d Rabia Akhtar, a South Asia security expert and dean of social sciences at the University of Lahore, in Pakistan, told me. After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, in 2021, Pakistan became less geopolitically important, as Washington courted India as a bulwark against China\u2019s ambitions. That year, only eighty-seven million dollars in U.S. aid was allocated to Pakistan, the lowest sum in twenty years. By then, Islamabad had pivoted toward Beijing for military and economic support, though it remained wary of totally relying on China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When Trump returned to office last year, Pakistan took the opportunity to reset relations with Washington. Working with the U.S., Pakistani forces captured Mohammad Sharifullah, an alleged mastermind of the bombing at Kabul Airport, in August, 2021, which killed more than a hundred and seventy people\u2014including thirteen American troops\u2014as the U.S. military was evacuating Afghans following the Taliban takeover. Sharifullah was extradited to the U.S. to face charges, giving Trump an immediate victory at the start of his second term. In his address to Congress last year, Trump thanked Islamabad \u201cfor helping arrest this monster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early in his Presidential term, Trump approved nearly four hundred million dollars in military assistance to Pakistan, despite a broad freeze on foreign aid. Then, in May, India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbors, engaged in tit-for-tat strikes for four days. When the conflict ended in a ceasefire, Trump took credit and later said he had prevented \u201ca nuclear war.\u201d New Delhi rejected Trump\u2019s assertion and said that it had hashed out the truce directly with Islamabad. Pakistan\u2019s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, however, declared that Trump had played \u201ca pivotal and paramount role.\u201d A few weeks later, Pakistan formally nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, declaring that the U.S. President had shown \u201cgreat strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship\u201d in preventing a larger conflict between two \u201cnuclear states.\u201d \u201cPakistan understood that this was something that they could seize as an opportunity,\u201d Farzana Shaikh, a Pakistan expert at the London-based think tank Chatham House, told me. The India-Pakistan tensions, along with Sharifullah\u2019s capture, were part of \u201ca fortunate convergence of factors that played into where we find ourselves today,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is a dazzling reinvention but one not crafted entirely of its own making.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But how exactly did Pakistan become the mediator for the U.S.-Iran war? The answer may lie in a meeting between Trump and Field Marshal Munir, which took place almost a year ago. After the ceasefire between Pakistan and India, Trump invited Munir to a private lunch at the White House. It was the first time a U.S. President had hosted a Pakistani Army chief without the presence of the nation\u2019s top civilian leaders, as well. The Twelve-Day War between Israel and Iran was ongoing, and Islamabad had recently denounced Israel\u2019s strikes in Iran as a violation of international law. Munir was expected to push Trump not to enter the conflict and to seek a ceasefire.<\/p>\n

At the meeting, which lasted around two hours, Trump and Munir discussed the tensions between Israel and Iran, economic development, mines and minerals, energy, and cryptocurrency, according to the Pakistani military. After the meeting, Trump told reporters that the Pakistanis \u201cknow Iran very well, better than most.\u201d He has also repeatedly called Munir \u201cmy favorite field marshal.\u201d The next month\u2014after U.S. warplanes had bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities\u2014the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in a meeting with top Pakistani officials, praised Islamabad\u2019s willingness to serve as a mediator with Iran. \u201cEven back then, the Pakistanis had positioned themselves to be seen as a potential mediator,\u201d Kugelman, of the Atlantic Council, said. \u201cIt\u2019s a tough job, for sure, but they wanted to do it.\u201d Islamabad, he added, wanted to \u201cpush back against India, try to push back against Pakistan\u2019s negative global image. They\u2019re very much about trying to get the world to see Pakistan in a more positive light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pakistan hopes its new stature will bring economic dividends. Munir has expanded his portfolio to include overseeing the country\u2019s trade and foreign investments, and the deals have followed. In September, U.S. Strategic Metals signed a five-hundred-million-dollar investment deal with Pakistan\u2019s military to mine minerals such as gold and copper and antimony. A few days later, Munir was invited back to the White House, this time with Prime Minister Sharif, to discuss Pakistan\u2019s critical-minerals ambitions further. That same month, Pakistan signed a defense pact with Saudi Arabia, committing thousands of Pakistani troops and warplanes to defend the kingdom. This January, Munir also oversaw the signing of a cryptocurrency partnership between Pakistan and an affiliate of World Liberty Financial, a company co-founded by Trump. \u201cPresident Trump is someone who appreciates strong leaders like Putin, Erdo\u011fan, and el-Sisi,\u201d Shaikh said, referring to the autocrats in Russia, Turkey, and Egypt. \u201cMunir fit that mold.\u201d Pakistan\u2019s offer to mediate, she added, \u201cwasn\u2019t purely altruistic. Pakistan, like other nation-states, calculated there were gains to be had from playing this role.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pakistan certainly has much to gain if the Iran war ends. It relies heavily on oil and fertilizers that flow through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed by rival U.S. and Iranian blockades. The war also threatens remittances from millions of Pakistani workers in the Persian Gulf, an inflow of roughly thirty-eight billion dollars per year, which makes up about ten per cent of Pakistan\u2019s G.D.P. Pakistan shares a border with Iran and is home to the largest Shiite Muslim population outside of that country, a minority that follows Iran\u2019s Ayatollahs and whose religious loyalties have long been a source of tension between the two governments. Both countries have claimed that militants and separatists have sheltered in the other country, and in 2024 they briefly struck each other\u2019s territories. Still, Pakistan\u2019s Embassy in Washington has long represented Iran\u2019s interests, since Tehran itself has no diplomatic ties with the United States. This has helped Islamabad\u2019s credibility as a mediator in Iran\u2019s eyes, along with the fact that, unlike most of Iran\u2019s neighbors, Pakistan does not host any U.S. military bases, Kugelman told me. Beijing, Iran\u2019s largest trading partner and the main buyer of Iranian oil, has backed Pakistan, too, bolstering the country\u2019s credibility even further. \u201cThat was critical because China has a lot more leverage over Iran than Pakistan,\u201d Kugelman explained.<\/p>\n

In some ways, Pakistan was the only realistic option, after traditional mediators\u2014such as Qatar and Oman, both of whom have a U.S. military presence\u2014were targeted by retaliatory Iranian missiles and drones, rendering them no longer neutral. Still, most Middle East experts were surprised when Pakistan emerged as the mediator. \u201cIf you had asked me to name the fifty most likely countries to mediate between the U.S. and Iran, Pakistan would not make my list, but there they are,\u201d Crocker, the former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, who also served as the top American diplomat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon, said.<\/p>\n

Pakistan now faces a delicate balancing act. It must navigate the demands of the U.S., Iran, the Persian Gulf states, and even Israel\u2014albeit indirectly, through Washington\u2014who all want to end the war, but on different terms. And it must do so without appearing to take a side. If Pakistan is perceived as too close to Washington or Riyadh, it could face blowback from Iran both militarily and politically, in addition to backlash from Pakistan\u2019s restive Shiite minority. If it appears to favor Tehran, the Gulf states could squeeze the millions of Pakistani workers whose remittances prop up the economy. The country\u2019s blossoming relationship with Trump could also lead to domestic unrest. In late May, Trump tried to pressure several Muslim-majority nations, including Pakistan, to sign the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations with Israel. \u201cAny move that appears to abandon the Palestinian cause would be politically explosive inside Pakistan,\u201d Akhtar, at the University of Lahore, told me. Islamabad\u2019s attempts to toe the line have already prompted harsh criticism from hawkish Republicans. \u201cIt has been apparent to me for quite a while that Pakistan as a mediator is more than problematic,\u201d Senator Lindsey Graham wrote in a post on X last week. \u201cTheir animosity towards Israel is long standing.\u201d One of Pakistan\u2019s biggest risks is \u201cthat it becomes the fall guy when things go wrong,\u201d Kugelman said, \u201cor even when things go downhill.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When it comes to its rivalry with India, Pakistan has already benefitted. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s snub of Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize led Washington to impose high tariffs on India, according to a report last year in the Times<\/em>. The U.S.-India relationship frayed further after the Trump Administration imposed a hundred-thousand-dollar fee and other restrictions on H1-B visas, a policy that disproportionately affected skilled workers from India. Pakistan\u2019s renewed access to Trump has deepened concerns in India that it is no longer Washington\u2019s indispensable partner in Asia. \u201cIt\u2019s always a zero-sum game between India and Pakistan,\u201d Shaikh said. \u201cIn Pakistan, what is Pakistan\u2019s gain is always seen as India\u2019s loss.\u201d On the Indian side, she continued, \u201cThere has been a bit of sullenness, a bit of disappointment. Like, look at those guys, how did they manage to pull it off? And look at us, we\u2019re sitting here as losers.\u201d That doesn\u2019t mean the U.S. will abandon India, which remains central to American strategy on China and technology. Last week, Rubio visited New Delhi, in a seeming attempt to repair the relationship. \u201cA moment of U.S.-Pakistan warmth will not erase the structural depth of U.S.-India ties,\u201d Akhtar said. \u201cWhat it can do is create more balance in Washington\u2019s imagination of South Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Pakistan receives praise from Trump and other leaders in the region for its mediation efforts, the Pakistani military is using this global prominence as cover to tighten its grip on power within the country. Political repression has reached levels not seen in years, Kugelman said, and, given Pakistan\u2019s newfound relevance, the military knows that \u201cthe international community will not be on its back, won\u2019t be pressuring it, and it won\u2019t be scrutinizing Pakistan for these policies playing out at home.\u201d Critics of the government and military, he added, fear that Pakistan will see the worldwide praise of its mediation role \u201cas a carte blanche to crack down even more.\u201d Lodhi, the former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S., said that \u201cit has further reinforced the imbalance between the civilians and the military,\u201d and will strengthen \u201cthe authoritarian trend already under way in Pakistan.\u201d And, as Munir cements his power, his friendship with Trump \u201cis a clear signal to everybody in Pakistan that they can expect no moderating pressure on him from the U.S. whatsoever,\u201d Crocker said.<\/p>\n

If a deal is struck, Pakistan hopes for more U.S. military and economic aid, investment deals, trade partnerships, Gulf money, and Trump\u2019s continued support. But it shouldn\u2019t necessarily expect too much. As Shaikh explained, the last time Pakistan played a significant mediator role\u2014facilitating the U.S.-China rapprochement in 1971\u2014it expected Washington to prevent the secession of East Pakistan, in return. The U.S. sent naval forces as a gesture, but did little else. East Pakistan became Bangladesh. \u201cThere\u2019s a deeply ingrained skepticism of the United States in the Pakistani establishment,\u201d Crocker said. \u201cEast Pakistan, our walkout after the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, and our pullout from Afghanistan, in 2021\u2014there\u2019s just a litany of reasons in the Pakistani narrative not to trust the United States, and they\u2019ve got to be aware of that history and how mercurial Trump is.\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

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The country\u2019s emergence as an unlikely mediator between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic illustrates how diplomacy has become more personal and transactional under President Donald Trump. Sudarsan Raghavan reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-lede"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Pakistan Is Using the Iran War to Reinvent Itself - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=349\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Pakistan Is Using the Iran War to Reinvent Itself - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The country\u2019s emergence as an unlikely mediator between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic illustrates how diplomacy has become more personal and transactional under President Donald Trump. 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