As the US-Iran war refuses to settle into either peace or full collapse, three questions have come to dominate the conversation in Pakistan. One, will the fighting end or is it heading toward something wider? Two, why does a country running an IMF programme, with its own politics far from settled, keep being accepted as mediator? Is this evidence of dutiful diplomacy, or is Pakistan simply doing Washington's bidding for a fee? And three, does Israel's conduct in Gaza, and now increasingly in the West Bank, point toward an actual strategic project of territorial expansion - the so-called "Greater Israel" - one that other regional states have already been forced, through war, to accommodate? Each question deserves to be treated on its evidence, not on sentiment.

The record so far argues against optimism, though it does not yet argue for full-scale war either. The Islamabad Memorandum, signed by Presidents Trump and Pezeshkian on June 17 after weeks of Pakistani shuttle diplomacy, opened a 60-day window meant to produce a lasting settlement. It survived barely three weeks. By July 8, Trump was publicly declaring the ceasefire "over" after Iran was accused of striking commercial vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, and Washington answered with strikes on Iranian coastal cities. What has followed is a pattern rather than an escalation curve: Washington strikes, then pauses to let negotiators work; Tehran retaliates against US assets in the Gulf while insisting it does not trust American intentions; both governments continue, despite everything, to say publicly that talks are not dead. Lebanon remains the unresolved variable.

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