The analysis indicates that the army chief’s secondary diplomacy has left Modi sidelined while Pakistan brokers communication between the United States and Iran.
Prime Minister Shehbaz, Field Marshal Munir and US President Donald Trump at the White House Photo: PMO X account
When India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar recently called Pakistan a go-between for acting as a messenger between the United States and Iran, the insult betrayed a deep sense of marginalization and was, in a sense, an inadvertent recognition of reality.
An analysis published in Foreign policy The magazine argued that, in the eyes of US President Donald Trump, being a fixer is not a sign of shame but a badge of usefulness.
Trump has found in the Chief of the Defense Forces and Chief of the Army Staff, Asim Munir, “exactly the type of interlocutor he likes: a hard power operator with direct access to the White House and willing to sell himself as useful.”
This, according to the article, “has left Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an awkward position, relegated to taking a single phone call from Trump about the crisis in the Middle East,” with Elon Musk listening on the line.
Read: Pakistan emerges where India could not
Pakistan, meanwhile, has been anything but inactive. Islamabad presented itself as a neutral mediator between Washington and Tehran and hosted talks on March 29 with Egypt, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia, where the four countries formed a committee to support a ceasefire and secured an agreement with Iran to allow Pakistani ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar rushed to Beijing to meet his Chinese counterpart, after which the two countries released a five-part peace plan. Given the lack of concrete results so far, Foreign policy As he notes, Pakistan is “framing this nascent process as a practical step to expand the channel of communication between the two sides.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Munir “maintained direct and separate channels to convey sensitive messages between Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, while communicating with other world leaders.”
The article draws a parallel to a crucial moment in history: “Pakistan’s role as a bridge between the United States and Iran reflects its facilitation of the United States’ opening to China in 1971,” when Islamabad leveraged its geography, its military channels, and its status as a broker to help secure Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing, a move that altered the course of Cold War geopolitics.
This “multidirectional diplomacy,” the article states, suggests that Islamabad is trying to resume that role, whose destiny today is not China but a rapprochement between the United States and Iran.
He adds that the recent flurry of activity has “elevated Pakistan from a so-called lost country to a state recognized for its efforts to ensure regional peace,” a change after years in which Islamabad was sidelined by previous US presidents.
Pakistan has not only deepened its ties with China, but has formalized a new strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia, while finding common ground with Iran in action against Baloch separatists.
The catalyst for this change, Foreign policy argues, it was the brief military conflict between Pakistan and India in May 2025, saying: “Islamabad managed to turn crisis into influence by allowing Trump to take credit for a ceasefire and nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize,” while a sullen Modi insisted that the ceasefire decision was strictly his.
That exchange, he says, “marked the beginning of a broader strategic shift in which Pakistan stopped looking isolated and India started looking exposed.”
Read more: War chaos in Iran slows down talks, Pakistan warns
The consequences for India have worsened since then. At the beginning of the war with Iran, Modi decided to support Israel – and by extension the United States –, leaving New Delhi out of its role as a credible arbitrator. India has since been forced to make telephone requests to Tehran to allow ships carrying cooking gas to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, while Pakistan is treated as a credible conduit in the same region where India once hoped to expand its holdings.
“Pakistan has surpassed India in manufacturing diplomatic relevance despite its own internal problems and risks of failure as an interlocutor, starting with over-promising and under-delivering,” he says. This moment, he adds, “underscores New Delhi’s poor position in its extensive neighborhood,” as “India remains tied to the domestic political narrative of aspiring to global leadership and is being ignored in the true corridors of power.”
The emergence of a middle power bloc – Pakistan, Egypt, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia – bringing together “three of the largest armies, nuclear weapons and financial clout in the Middle East” represents an additional challenge to Indian interests. For India, which has always preferred bilateral engagements, Foreign policy “The emergence of such a group worryingly suggests a future in which actors not aligned with New Delhi’s vision will shape the regional order.”
These challenges also expose a harsher truth about the US-India relationship, which, he argues, “has always revolved more around shared anxieties regarding China than shared values or deep-seated trust.” If army chief Munir can strike a deal with Iran or provide a stable platform for US interests in South Asia, Trump will not hesitate to reward him at Modi’s expense, he claims.
However, the article is equally candid about the risks Pakistan carries. His mediation is “built on a fragile foundation” and his “diplomatic rise is disproportionately tied to a single man and a White House that prizes theatrics and tactical utility.”
“Pakistan is not being accepted because its institutions are strong or its economy is resilient; it is simply available,” he adds. Its economy remains fragile, “its military system still dominates foreign policy in ways that limit the ability of civilian officials to negotiate quickly, and its political system is barely stable enough to support a long-term strategic pivot.”
Any mediating role between hostile powers, Foreign policy warns, it exposes Pakistan to “retaliation, suspicion and the possibility of being blamed by one side for the failure of the talks or by the other for taking too much advantage of the access.” The talks will have to be indirect, with Pakistani officials going back and forth between delegations.
Also read: US Vice President Vance spoke to Pakistani intermediaries about the conflict with Iran on Tuesday: source
“The same position that creates visibility will also make Pakistan the bearer of bad news when talks fail, and that remains a distinct possibility,” the analysis reads. In the court of a transactional leader like Trump, he warns, “the distance between a favored middleman and a discarded asset is remarkably short.”
The internal vulnerabilities, however, “do not diminish the fact that Pakistan has successfully broken the diplomatic quarantine that Modi worked so hard to impose.”
For more than a decade, Modi’s strategy was simple: globalize India’s economy, deepen partnerships with the West and master the narrative of a responsible rising power, so that “Pakistan was pushed to the margins.” The current situation, the article maintains, shows how that foreign policy prioritized internal narratives over the harsh realities of international power dynamics.
“The real shame for India is not that Pakistan has become more active. It is that [Army Chief] Munir is being welcomed in capitals where Modi once hoped he would be consulted, if not deferred,” foreign police states. Modi, he adds, “must come to terms with an uncomfortable realization: Pakistan is still there, still annoying, still unstable, and yet it is also suddenly more useful to the powers that matter right now.”
“India cannot afford to ignore this shock at a time of great geopolitical change,” he concludes, and for Modi, it should be a wake-up call to rethink the fundamentals of his foreign policy, not an excuse for his minister to resort to pejorative insults against Pakistan.
