Is Pakistan’s Mediation a Choice or a Necessity?

The war that began with the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran on 28 February 2026 entered a new phase with the interim ceasefire agreement of 8 April. Pakistan has taken on a role in this phase as the sole mediator and hosted the Islamabad talks of 11-12 April. Pakistan is displaying one of its most active diplomatic postures since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Although this initiative is largely read in public as a search for prestige or a move to draw closer to the Trump administration, the mediating role Islamabad has assumed has more to do with a reflex of threat management than with foreign policy gain. Pakistan’s response to the war has been shaped by pressure generated simultaneously by multiple layers, from the security of its western border to energy corridors, and from internal security to economic resilience.

The mediating actors

Pakistan’s mediation effort is being conducted by a trio composed of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar. Trump’s Truth Social post of 8 April, stating explicitly that the ceasefire had been secured “on the basis of direct talks with Sharif and Munir,” shows that this line of contact runs not through a single actor but through an institutional coordination mechanism.

The relationship of personal trust formed by Field Marshal Munir’s White House visit in July 2025 and by Trump’s description of him as “my favorite field marshal” has brought to light a diplomatic channel that had been standing ready since before the war. That channel triggered a serious reassessment in Washington after Pakistan, in the four-day India-Pakistan clash of May 2025, downed several Indian aircraft including Rafales using Chinese-made J-10C fighters and PL-15 air-to-air missiles. These developments have moved Pakistan into the position of one of the principal mediating actors Washington engages with from the Muslim world.

The second channel is coordination with China. The Five-Point Initiative announced by Ishaq Dar during his visit to Beijing on 31 March, together with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, was built on the headings of an immediate ceasefire, the restoration of normal navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, adherence to the United Nations Charter, the prioritization of a diplomatic solution and the establishment of humanitarian corridors. The carrier role Pakistan assumed in this process took concrete form as the Chinese foreign minister held more than twenty telephone conversations with a large number of countries, including Russia, Oman, France, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The third channel is the quadrilateral Sunni-Islamic coordination line formed by the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who met in Riyadh on 20 March and in Islamabad on 29 March.

Five elements threatening Pakistan

Pakistan perceives five distinct but interconnected threats arising from this war. The first is the scenario of the collapse of its western border. The second is the risk that sectarian fault lines in internal security turn into wide-scale instability. The third is that an energy and currency shock originating at Hormuz directly affects Pakistan’s already fragile economy and threatens political stability. The fourth is that Israel places back on the agenda the possibility of a preventive strike covering Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure after Iran, and that Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent becomes open to question within the regional equation. The fifth threat perception is the sense of strategic encirclement fed by the India-Israel rapprochement.

Seen from Pakistan’s perspective, the principal threat arises from the first layer. Along the 909-kilometre Pakistan-Iran border, the symmetrical balance of threat between the Sunni Baloch militant organization Jaish al-Adl and the ethno-nationalist Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) has been disrupted by the war. On 13 June 2025 Jaish al-Adl called on Baloch youth to join the ranks of the “Resistance,” and in December 2025 it announced the formation of the People’s Fighters Front, bringing together Baloch political groups in the region. In the course of 2025, 254 militant attacks took place in Balochistan province alone, in which 419 people lost their lives and 607 were injured. The emphasis on “fear of ungoverned spaces,” frequently repeated in Pakistan’s diplomatic discourse, gives concrete form to the concern that a third active front could open on the western border if the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) collapses.

This threat is not confined to the Baloch axis. Pakistan is also plainly concerned about the possibility that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) will use Iranian territory as a logistical refuge and transit route. The weakening of central authority in Iran means both that the TTP gains a new corridor of movement between Afghanistan and Balochistan and that the security umbrella supporting the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Gwadar port infrastructure is eroded. In parallel, the risk of a second wave of Afghan migration also arises. While Pakistan is already trying to manage the deportation process of 1.4 million Afghan refugees, instability in Iran could revive this migration route and further increase demographic pressure on Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The fragility in the second layer took concrete form in two developments that followed one another within a short period. On 1 March 2026 at least 10 protesters lost their lives when fire was opened outside the US Consulate in Karachi, and in Gilgit-Baltistan a three-day curfew was declared and troops were deployed to the region. In addition, the words Field Marshal Munir used at an iftar gathering with Shia clerics in Rawalpindi on 20 March — “If you love Iran that much, go to Iran. The doors are open” — set out plainly the regime’s red lines on internal security.

The third layer concerns the Hormuz-energy-economy chain. Roughly 90 percent of Pakistan’s crude oil imports come from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and therefore pass through the Strait of Hormuz. As of 3 April the price of petrol had risen to 458.40 PKR a litre and diesel to 520.35 PKR, with a total fuel price increase of 56 percent, the second highest in the world after Myanmar. The oil import bill has risen from 300 million dollars to 800 million dollars. According to the estimates of an international economic research institution, Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves are projected to fall from their pre-war level of 20.8 billion dollars to 6.8 billion dollars by the end of 2026 and to 1.6 billion dollars in the 2028 fiscal year. This picture creates the risk that the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 7 billion dollar programme will also be derailed. Pakistan’s ability to sustain its mediation capacity is therefore directly linked to its economic resilience.

The fourth layer comprises fragilities at the nuclear and strategic level. While Pakistan takes seriously the possibility of an Israeli preventive strike along the lines of the “Begin Doctrine,” it does not see itself as an actor that has been directly targeted. At the same time, the phrase “all military means” contained in the Saudi Arabia-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement of September 2025 has produced a deliberate strategic ambiguity. Ishaq Dar’s statement in the Senate on 26 March 2026 — “we have a defence pact with Saudi Arabia, and I reminded the Iranian side of it” — showed that the agreement is in practice being operated as an active instrument of deterrent uncertainty. In Israeli security circles Pakistan’s mediation is assessed as “highly problematic,” and the possibility that Riyadh might indirectly gain access to nuclear capacity through Pakistan stands out as one of the chief sources of concern.

The fifth and final layer is the strategic pressure created by the India-Israel rapprochement. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel on 25-26 February, two days before the war began, followed by Iran opening fire on Indian vessels on 19 April and the expiry of the US waiver for Chabahar port on 26 April, has produced a strategic narrowing in India’s opening to Central Asia through Iran while giving Pakistan a relatively wider field of manoeuvre.

Pakistan’s search for balance on multiple fronts

The measures Pakistan has taken are intended to manage this five-layered pressure simultaneously. In this framework the Pakistan Navy launched “Operation Muhafiz-ul-Bahr” (Guardian of the Sea) on 9 March 2026 with Tughril-class (Type 054A/P) frigates and Yarmook-class offshore patrol vessels, taking on escort duty for Pakistani-flagged merchant ships sailing the Karachi-Gulf and Karachi-Red Sea routes. In terms of border security the Frontier Corps has been reinforced, while in internal security the army has been deployed under Article 245 of the Constitution. On the economic front a four-day working week has been introduced, educational institutions were closed for two weeks, an additional 3 billion dollars in liquidity was secured from Saudi Arabia and the maturity of the existing 5 billion dollars in deposits was extended.

This picture shows that Pakistan is trying to generate a distinct strategic gain from each front. While Islamabad seeks on one hand to institutionalize its privileged position as mediator with the Trump administration, it is at the same time preserving its relationship of trust with Tehran, deepening Riyadh-Beijing coordination and trying to build a line of balance against the India-Israel axis. However, the claims that reached the American media in May 2026, that Iranian aircraft were stationed at Nur Khan Air Base during the ceasefire process, have damaged Pakistan’s image of neutrality and increased calls in Washington for “a reassessment of Pakistan’s role as mediator.”

In sum, Pakistan’s diplomatic posture since 28 February is as much a strategic necessity imposed by a sense of encirclement as it is a choice. The sustainability of the mediating role appears to depend on two fundamental external thresholds. The first is the achievement of lasting normalization in the Strait of Hormuz and an easing of the pressure on Pakistan’s energy import bill. The second is that the signals of rapprochement between Jaish al-Adl and the BLA in Balochistan are not carried to the operational level. Beyond these two external thresholds, an internal fragility should also not be overlooked. That the present architecture rests largely on the personal Munir-Trump axis produces a risk in itself in terms of institutional sustainability. If these three conditions are not met together, Pakistan will be living through one of its most active diplomatic periods since February 1979 while at the same time facing its most fragile economic conditions.

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This article was first published in IRAM on May 24, 2026.