The advantage of access: Why Pakistan has emerged as the mediator between Iran and the US
· Scroll
No one should be surprised that Pakistan has emerged as the intermediary between Iran and the United States, helped secure a two-week ceasefire at a moment of extreme danger and is now hosting peace talks in Islamabad.
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To see this as an unexpected diplomatic leap is to ignore both Pakistan’s strategic location and its long, if uneven, history of backchannel diplomacy. Islamabad did not suddenly acquire relevance because this war became dangerous. It was already relevant because it has spent decades positioning itself at the intersection of rival power centres, often talking to states that do not trust one another but still need a messenger they can all use.
Pakistan’s current role is rooted first in geography. Iran is not a distant crisis for Pakistan. It is a neighbour with whom Pakistan shares a long border, overlapping ethnic population, security concerns, energy anxieties, and deep religious and social connections. A war that weakens or destabilises Iran does not remain confined to Iranian territory. It threatens to spill directly into Pakistan through sectarian tensions, refugee flows, fuel shocks, and militancy in Balochistan.
For Islamabad, mediation is therefore not some idealistic project dressed up as global leadership. It is a hard calculation of national interest. Preventing...