ISLAMABAD:
For months, Pakistan found itself playing an unfamiliar but influential role: acting as one of the main mediators between Iran and the United States at a time when the two adversaries appeared dangerously close to a broader regional war.
Today, however, that diplomatic push has all but evaporated.
The renewed exchange of military attacks between Washington and Tehran has made the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), once hailed as the framework that could return both sides to diplomacy, virtually irrelevant.
With missiles once again flying across the Gulf and no indication that either side is willing to return to negotiations, Pakistan appears to have deliberately taken a step back, adopting what is described as a “wait and see” approach.
The latest escalation is precisely the scenario Islamabad hoped to avoid. Pakistan never expected the MoU to bring about an overnight breakthrough.
Officials involved in the mediation understood that decades of mistrust between Iran and the United States could not be erased by a single agreement or a handful of meetings. The expectation was more modest: to create enough political space for sustained dialogue and prevent the military confrontation from spiraling out of control.
Instead, the opposite has happened. The renewed hostilities are believed to have left Islamabad deeply disappointed.
The feeling within Pakistan’s foreign policy establishment is that months of arduous diplomacy have been undone in a matter of days.
Previously, whenever tensions flared after the signing of the Islamabad MoU, Pakistan and Qatar acted quickly to contain the situation.
After talks in Switzerland, for example, Iran and the United States carried out limited retaliatory strikes. Those incidents threatened to derail the diplomatic process, but coordinated intervention by Islamabad and Doha managed to persuade both sides to restore the ceasefire. This finally paved the way for another round of indirect negotiations in Doha.
Those talks concluded with the understanding that negotiations at a technical level would resume after the funeral of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But even before the funeral ceremonies concluded, the fragile calm collapsed. Iran launched missile attacks on vessels attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz without what Tehran described as its authorization. The United States responded militarily, setting off another cycle of retaliation that has steadily escalated.
Since then, there have been few signs that either side is trying to stop the escalation. Instead, military exchanges have become more frequent while official rhetoric in both Washington and Tehran has hardened considerably.
It is in this context that Pakistan’s relative silence has become increasingly noticeable. Unlike previous rounds of escalation, Islamabad has refrained from publicly positioning itself at the center of mediation efforts. Although senior Pakistani officials have remained in contact with Iran and other regional actors, the proactive diplomacy that characterized Pakistan’s previous role has largely disappeared.
Observers say the change reflects growing frustration rather than a lack of commitment. Pakistan believes it has invested significant diplomatic capital in creating the conditions for dialogue. The collapse of that process, despite repeated efforts to preserve it, has convinced policymakers that neither Washington nor Tehran are currently prepared to prioritize diplomacy.
The prevailing view in Islamabad is that if both capitals remain convinced that military pressure can produce strategic gains, external mediation is unlikely to succeed.
As a diplomat from a key regional country put it privately, both sides seem determined to test whether force can achieve what negotiations could not.
Only after they conclude that military action cannot offer a lasting solution, the diplomat believes, will meaningful diplomacy be possible again.
Until then, Pakistan sees little value in repeatedly intervening only to see fragile understandings collapse after each new exchange of fire.
That does not mean Islamabad has completely abandoned its role as mediator. The visit of Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to Doha, officially to offer his condolences on the death of the former emir of Qatar, has inevitably fueled speculation about possible diplomatic contacts.
Qatar, along with Pakistan, remains one of the few countries that maintains communication channels with both Tehran and Washington.
However, the feeling here is that conditions are not conducive to another mediation initiative. In his assessment, diplomacy cannot succeed unless both sides first demonstrate a genuine willingness to stop military operations.
For now, Pakistan seems content to stay on the sidelines.
The calculation is that diplomacy cannot prevail over adversaries who continue to believe that battlefield successes will strengthen their negotiating positions.
Islamabad is therefore awaiting the inevitable moment when both Washington and Tehran conclude that military escalation has reached its limits.
When that time comes, Islamabad will once again be ready to offer its good offices. Until then, the mediator has preferred patience over activism.
