There is one question Pakistan’s critics should answer before declaring its Iran diplomacy a failure. When Washington and Tehran were shooting at each other, who got them into the same room?

And there is another.

After the ceasefires broke, the threats returned, and missiles again began speaking louder than diplomats; which country did both camps still describe as the mediator?

The answer to both is Pakistan.

That is where any serious assessment of Islamabad’s role must begin.

Pakistan did not start the war between Iran and the United States. Pakistan did not write Washington’s nuclear demands. Pakistan does not control the Revolutionary Guards, Donald Trump, Israel, the Strait of Hormuz or the regional calculations of half a dozen capitals. It therefore makes little sense to judge Pakistani mediation by asking whether Islamabad has succeeded in doing what Washington and Tehran themselves have been unable to do for almost half a century: remove the causes of their confrontation.

A mediator is not a magician.

Yet this is precisely the standard now being applied.

An important essay published by Ibrahim Al-Marashi in South Asian Voices offers a far more useful framework. Pakistan’s achievement, Al-Marashi argues, should be understood through the mechanics of mediation rather than through the fantasy that the mediator somehow commands the belligerents.

For years we were told that Pakistan’s problem was geography.

Today, geography is part of its diplomatic capital.

Pakistan borders Iran. It has access in Washington. It has a strategic relationship with China. It has deep military and economic relationships with the Gulf. It can speak to Türkiye. It has credibility across much of the Muslim world. Most importantly, during this crisis it retained enough........

© Daily Times