For years, South Asia has treated war in the Gulf as a serious but external danger. Oil prices rise, remittances wobble, diplomacy grows tense, and then the region adjusts. This time may be different. A prolonged war centered on Iran does not just threaten the Middle East. It risks redrawing the strategic map of South Asia itself, especially along the already fractured belt that runs from Iran’s eastern frontier through Pakistan’s Baluchistan and into Afghanistan.

Pakistan understands this better than most. Its push for de-escalation is not the language of abstract peace-making. It is the instinct of a state that knows it may not be able to withstand the consequences of a long Iran war. Pakistan’s economy remains acutely vulnerable to energy shocks, and recent fuel-price hikes tied to the wider conflict have already shown how quickly external war can become domestic pain. In a country still burdened by inflation, debt pressure, and chronic political instability, a sustained rise in imported energy costs would not merely strain the system. It could shake it.

But the deeper danger lies to Pakistan’s west. Iran is not some distant actor in Islamabad’s security calculus. The two countries share a long, restless border cutting through one of the most volatile spaces in the region. On both sides lie under-governed peripheries, smuggling routes, militant networks, and separatist grievances that have never been fully contained. Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province has long been one of the Islamic........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)