Pakistan has pitched Islamabad as a possible venue for talks as early as this week involving senior figures from the Trump administration and Iran, the report said.
Pakistan is positioning itself as the “lead mediator” trying to “broker an end” to the US-Israel war against Iran, with Pakistan’s Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir speaking to US President Donald Trump Sunday, UK-based daily Financial Times reported Monday.
Pakistan has pitched Islamabad as a possible venue for talks as early as this week involving senior figures from the Trump administration and Iran, the report said.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif also held talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian Monday.
Pakistan’s leading English daily, Dawn, also reported that Pakistan, along with Turkiye and Egypt, is engaged in “active back-channel diplomacy” to “bridge the gap between” the US and Iran, an official confirmed to the newspaper Monday.
The official said that this also involved US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. A “strategic synergy” between Ankara, Cairo and Islamabad had established a “vital diplomatic conduit, demonstrating that regional cooperation is the most effective antidote to escalation,” the Dawn report said.
The conversation between the Pakistan’s and Iranian leaders came at around the same time as Trump announced that he was delaying his threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants after “very good and productive” conversations with Tehran to end the war.
The White House declined to elaborate on Trump’s negotiations. “These are sensitive diplomatic discussions and the United States will not negotiate through the news media,” the White House said, according to FT.
Turkey, which was involved in mediation efforts before the war, has also been talking to Iranian officials and Witkoff in an attempt to secure a brief ceasefire and open space for negotiations.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar held talks with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan Monday. Egypt’s foreign minister Badr Abdelatty also spoke with his Iranian and Pakistani counterparts Sunday, as well as with Witkoff and Qatar’s foreign minister.
Iran’s foreign ministry denied any direct negotiations with the US since the start of the war, but said that some regional states were involved in mediation efforts.
“Over the past few days, messages were received via certain friendly states conveying the US request for negotiations to end the war,” the foreign ministry’s spokesperson told official news agency IRNA.
“Appropriate responses were given (to those initiatives) in accordance with the country’s fundamental positions.” The spokesperson insisted that there had been no changes to Iran’s positions regarding the situation at the Strait of Hormuz or Tehran’s conditions for ending the war, according to IRNA.
The FT report said that senior Pakistani officials were “back-channelling communications” between Tehran and Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and envoy. Sharif has spoken to Pezeshkian multiple times since the war started. “While sharing with the Iranian President the diplomatic outreach efforts of Pakistan’s leadership, the prime minister assured the Iranian leadership that Pakistan would continue to play a constructive role in facilitating peace,” Pakistan said in a readout of their conversation on Monday.
Dar told Arab counterparts at a meeting in Riyadh last week that Islamabad was mediating between the US and Iran, but did not provide details, a diplomat said.
Pakistan, which does not host any American bases, is one of the few US allies in the neighbourhood that has been spared Tehran’s missiles and drones. That fact has helped shore it up as a neutral arbiter to Iran and the US, according to three people familiar with the matter, the FT report said.
Pakistan has the second-largest Shia Muslim population after Iran. “Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei namechecked Pakistan in a written message…to mark the start of the Iranian new year last week, saying he had a special feeling towards the people of Pakistan,” the FT report said.
