Pakistan appears, at present, unusually consequential in global diplomacy. While Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir continues his engagement in Tehran, apparently calibrated to influence the parameters of next week’s second round of US–Iran talks, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is in Riyadh to pursue what may become a more durable regional understanding.

Sharif’s four-day visit also includes Qatar and Türkiye, and, taken together with FM Munir’s parallel track, suggests a deliberate civil–military division of labour. The underlying objective seems to be aligning Gulf and Turkish positions ahead of the next session, which is expected to convene on Pakistani soil.

This juncture is better understood as the product of sustained Pakistani diplomatic effort than as a fortuitous development. The first round of direct US–Iran negotiations in Islamabad on 10–11 April can be read as a modest but meaningful outcome of patient statecraft.

Over twenty-one hours, Vice President JD Vance’s delegation and the Iranian team, led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, remained in separate wings of the Serena Hotel, as Pakistani mediators Munir and Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar moved between them through the night. No overarching agreement was reached; nonetheless, both sides reportedly acknowledged incremental movement and kept the channel open.

That extended session, described as the first face-to-face engagement of its kind in decades, appears to have followed weeks of back-channel preparation, military-to-military confidence-building, and political facilitation that Islamabad was particularly well positioned to provide.

The wider setting remains unsettled. The escalation that preceded the talks followed US–Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in late February.

This episode was consistent with patterns observed in earlier Western interventions, generating immediate tactical effects and contributing to disrupted supply lines, energy market volatility, and elevated proxy risks across the Levant and........

© The Friday Times