Pakistan trades pariah card for the mediator's seat
After US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, Islamabad became Washington's back-channel of choice while opening its own war on Afghanistan and embedding troops in Saudi Arabia.
Relationship Movements
8 shownLast 90 Days
Pakistan spent the last three months being two countries at once. Abroad, it became the government Donald Trump phoned before he bombed someone. At home, it ran an open war on its western border and expelled refugees by the hundred thousand. The two halves were not in tension. They paid for each other.
The turn came in late February, when US and Israeli strikes on Iran opened a regional war. Islamabad declared itself neutral and quietly told both sides it could carry messages. Within weeks it had pulled Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt into a four-nation mediation track. By April that track had brokered a two-week ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. Trump publicly thanked Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir. He called Munir his 'favourite Field Marshal', said the pair had talked him out of a strike package, and credited them with the Hamas deal of the year before. The country he once accused of 'lies and deceit' became the one he checked with first.
The same week, Pakistan opened a second front. It struck camps inside Afghanistan belonging to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the insurgency it accuses Kabul of harbouring. The Taliban hit back. Cross-border fire ran for weeks. A truce held over Eid al-Fitr, then cracked by late April. While the fighting went on, police raids in Karachi and Peshawar swept up Afghan refugees, and more than 146,000 were expelled in the first four months of the year. Human Rights Watch said the campaign broke Pakistan's commitments under the Convention Against Torture. Kabul, with nowhere else to turn, moved closer to Delhi.
Every other major relationship leaned into the gap the wars opened. Pakistan sent eight thousand troops, fighter jets and air-defence systems to Saudi Arabia under last autumn's mutual defence pact, the largest such deployment in two decades. President Asif Ali Zardari spent the last week of April in China negotiating the next phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The IMF cleared two tranches totalling more than $2.5 billion under eleven new conditions, and Russia offered discounted crude as the Strait of Hormuz tightened. The mediator's seat bought all of that. The bill is now visible. Pakistan is bound to Saudi defence at a moment when the Saudi-Iran rivalry could turn hot again. It is fighting a war on a border it cannot seal. Its leverage with Washington runs through one transactional president and one field marshal.
Diplomatic Summary
Pakistan plays every side of South Asia from the middle, leaning on Saudi capital, Chinese infrastructure and American weapons while keeping every door at least cracked open.
Key Interests
- 01Hedge India through layered partnerships
- 02Contain TTP threat from Afghanistan
- 03Keep Gulf and Chinese capital flowing
Geography defines Pakistan's foreign policy. A larger India sits to the east and a porous Afghanistan to the west. A long Arabian coast carries the country's commerce and labour migration; a mountain border with China has become its economic lifeline. Islamabad has resolved that geography by collecting patrons. Saudi Arabia provides remittance flows from millions of Pakistani workers and, under the 2025 Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement, an explicit security umbrella. China is the patron of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and a steady source of capital when the IMF turns difficult. The United States supplies weapons, IMF cover and, since Trump's praise of Pakistan's role in the 2026 Iran-war mediation, a working channel at the head-of-state level. The civilian government under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif rules through coalition, but foreign-policy weight sits with the army, where Field Marshal Asim Munir's rapport with the Trump White House has become a national asset. Beneath the diplomatic agility is a chronic crisis economy. Pakistan is on its twenty-fourth IMF programme. Eleven new conditions were added to the current $7 billion facility in April, and growth barely keeps pace with population. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, an insurgency based in eastern Afghanistan, has driven an open war with Kabul since late February. The hyphenation with India remains the country's defining frame. The May 2025 ceasefire holds, but commercial flights have been suspended for a year and the Indus Waters Treaty remains in dispute. At home, the army's grip tightened after Imran Khan's removal. Sectarian and ethnic strains and unrest in Balochistan keep the country fragile even as its diplomatic weight grows.
Power Rankings
Overall #26Sources
8 cited- 01How Pakistan managed to get the US and Iran to a ceasefireAl Jazeera·2026-04-08
- 02Pakistan hosts four-nation bid to encourage US, Iran towards diplomacyAl Jazeera·2026-03-29
- 03Why Pakistan has emerged as a mediator between US and IranThe Washington Post·2026-03-27
- 04Ceasefire at risk as Pakistan and Afghanistan report cross-border attacksAl Jazeera·2026-04-27
- 05Pakistan: Surge in Forced Returns of Afghan RefugeesHuman Rights Watch·2026-04-21
- 06Pakistan Sends Fighter Jets and Thousands of Troops to Saudi Arabia during Iran warModern Diplomacy·2026-05-18
- 07Pakistan Gets Initial IMF Approval for $1.2 Billion of LoansBloomberg·2026-03-28
- 08Why the Pakistani President's Visit to China Amid the West Asia Crisis Is ImportantThe Diplomat·2026-04-25