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Pakistan’s emergence as a diplomatic interlocutor in the enduring ‘engagement’ between the United States and Iran, has triggered considerable disquiet in New Delhi’s security, political, diplomatic and media circles.

For many within India’s strategic and military establishment, this development is as unsettling as it is revealing, underscoring yet again Islamabad’s ability to insert itself into consequential geopolitical matters, well beyond its economic or overall standing and power.

India, on the other hand, despite its growing global profile and deepening ties with both Washington and Tel Aviv over the past two decades, remains effectively sidelined – absent from a theatre where its stakes are neither trivial nor distant. At one level, India’s exclusion is structural: it has limited direct leverage over US-Israel-Iran dynamics, particularly given its cautious – some would argue overly supine – balancing between all involved parties and the Gulf states by repeatedly emphasising that war was not an option.

But within New Delhi’s official circles, there is also a quieter, more pointed frustration: that Pakistani military and diplomatic officials have once again demonstrated an agility, flexibility, and daleri or chutzpah – in inserting themselves into high-stakes Iran crisis. Traits like these are rarely, if ever, associated with India’s formal, process-driven, and highly bureaucratic strategic culture. Consequently, the recurring outcome is a persistent gap between India’s growing heft on paper and its limited ability to shape outcomes in moments, like the Iran crisis, that truly matter.

However, at the outset, India has belittled Pakistan’s role in trying to end the Iran war. Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar’s reported characterisation of Islamabad as a mere “middleman” or “dalal” reflects a view that Pakistan, alongside Egypt, Türkiye and possibly Oman, has allowed itself to be manipulated for tactical ends, rather than engaged as a trusted strategically.

Yet such public rhetoric conceals India’s quiet unease – for even a “middleman” occupies a seat at the high table of global diplomacy, shaping atmospherics, facilitating communication, and remaining relevant. By contrast, India is left on the side-lines, its voice neither sought nor missed at a moment of grave global consequence.

Pakistan’s utility to Washington in this context is not entirely surprising.

Its over 900-km long border with Iran is more than just a geographic line – it is a strategically sensitive and politically consequential frontier that has acquired renewed importance in the current regional flux. Running through the desolate expanse of Balochistan on both sides, it separates Pakistan’s Balochistan province from Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan........

© The Wire