The rise of Pakistan in the emerging diplomacy over Iran

When the White House restored Donald Trump’s China visit for 14-15 May after delaying it because of the Iran war, and the Kremlin reiterated that Putin would visit China soon in the first half of the year, it revealed the conflict is no longer only a military contest between Iran, Israel and the US. It is becoming a wider geopolitical and geoeconomic shock, one that is driving up pressure for de-escalation even among powers that do not share the same endgame. As the costs of war spread through energy markets, shipping routes, inflation and domestic politics, diplomacy is reassembling around a new set of actors. Among them, Pakistan is rising with unusual speed. 

Pakistan’s rise in the emerging diplomacy over Iran is not the result of sudden brilliance or newfound power in the abstract. It is the product of structural usefulness. Few states today are simultaneously acceptable enough to Tehran, connected enough to Washington, valuable enough to Beijing and legitimate enough in the wider Muslim world to serve as a practical intermediary. Pakistan is not neutral in the pure sense, and it is certainly not a great power. But crises do not always reward purity or size. They reward access, flexibility and relevance. Right now, Pakistan offers all three. Islamabad has reportedly already relayed multiple messages between Washington and Tehran and has emerged as a potential venue for talks at a time when most other channels are constrained, although Iran has come out to deny that Pakistan has been given such a role.

The first reason Pakistan matters is that the Iran war has become a global economic problem before it has found a political solution. The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed energy security back to the centre of international politics. The strait’s closure has put at risk a waterway through which around one-fifth of global oil and gas supplies once moved, while the war has already fed fears of inflation and economic slowdown well beyond the Middle East. This kind of pressure changes diplomatic incentives. Washington may still speak the language of coercion, and Tehran may still speak the language of resistance, but both now operate under the shadow of mounting international costs. That makes intermediary states more valuable than they would be in a contained regional war. 

The second reason is that the old mediation formula is weakening. Traditional Gulf intermediaries have not disappeared, and they remain indispensable stakeholders in any eventual settlement. But they are no longer enough. Tehran’s distrust of American diplomacy has deepened sharply. The plain fact that Trump launched strikes while talks were still in motion last June and this year, further hollows out the credibility of Gulf intermediaries and US assurances. 

At the same time, Gulf states are constrained by their own security dependence on Washington and their exposure to regional retaliation. They are still part of the diplomatic equation, but they are no longer universally convincing as the sole bridge between the US and Iran. In this setting, the premium shifts toward states that are close enough to matter but not so entangled that they are automatically discounted. Pakistan fits that description. 

That is why Pakistan’s current role is more significant than a standard round of shuttle diplomacy. Islamabad has not merely offered good offices. It is already functioning as a diplomatic platform. On 29 March, Pakistan hosted the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt to discuss proposals for reopening Hormuz and lowering the temperature of the conflict. 

Some of these proposals were submitted to Washington, and one idea under discussion involved a multinational consortium, including Pakistan, to help manage oil flows through the strait. Pakistan’s foreign minister also said Iran had agreed to allow 20 additional Pakistani-flagged vessels through Hormuz. This is not symbolic positioning. It is operational diplomacy. It suggests that Pakistan is becoming part of the machinery through which de-escalation might be implemented, not merely advocated. 

Pakistan’s diplomatic relevance, however, rests on a harder strategic base than before. The country is no longer seen only as a troubled state with nuclear weapons and chronic instability. Its conventional military reputation has changed. In the May 2025 India-Pakistan clash, Pakistani Chinese-supplied fighter aircraft shot down at least two Indian military aircraft, including at least one Rafale. 

Later reporting suggested that the encounter drew global military attention because it offered a rare glimpse into how Chinese systems, Pakistani tactics, and networked warfare might perform under real combat conditions. That episode did not prove Pakistan had overtaken India in any comprehensive sense. But it did establish something important: Pakistan could no longer be dismissed as conventionally weak. In short, diplomacy backed by demonstrated military competence carries more weight than diplomacy backed only by rhetoric. 

China’s role is central to this transformation. Pakistan was the world’s fifth-largest arms importer in 2021-25 and 80% of its arms imports came from China. That is not a normal supplier relationship; it is a strategic military backbone. Beijing has also shown that it can use its influence in Islamabad in practical ways. 

In March, Chinese mediation reportedly helped reduce fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan after some of the worst clashes since the Taliban’s return to power. This matters for the Iran file because it shows Pakistan is not only valuable in itself; it is also a regional interface through which Chinese influence can sometimes be translated into local diplomatic outcomes. If Beijing wants to stabilize the region without stepping fully into the front line, Pakistan is one of the most plausible vehicles. 

Pakistan’s ties to the Arab world strengthen this role further. Last September, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a formal mutual defence pact, significantly upgrading a longstanding security relationship. The nuclear dimension remains implicit rather than explicit, but the strategic message was unmistakable. 

Pakistan is the only Muslim-majority nuclear-armed state, and its security ties with Riyadh give it regional weight that goes beyond South Asia. This does not make Pakistan the security guarantor of the Middle East. It does, however, make it harder to treat Pakistan as just another messenger. In any emerging regional order, states are judged not only by what they say but by what they could plausibly contribute to deterrence, reassurance, or enforcement. Pakistan’s stock in all three categories has risen. 

This is where Pakistan’s role intersects with the possibility of limited great-power coordination over Iran. The US wants a way out of a war that is becoming politically and economically expensive. China wants stability in energy flows and global trade, while preserving freedom of manoeuvre and avoiding the burden of underwriting an American war. China reportedly bought over 80% of Iran’s shipped crude in 2025, giving it significant economic leverage. 

Following its setback in Syria, Russia, for its part, wants to preserve Iran as a regional foothold without bearing the full cost of rescue or reconstruction. These three powers are not converging on a shared grand bargain. But they may still converge on something narrower: preventing the war from spiralling further. For that kind of limited coordination, a country like Pakistan is highly useful. It can host, relay, package, and potentially help execute arrangements that larger powers prefer not to own directly. 

None of this means Pakistan is about to become the architect of a new Middle Eastern order. Its limits are obvious. It cannot impose terms on Washington or Tehran. It cannot replace China’s economic leverage, America’s military leverage, or Russia’s relationship with Iran. Its own economy remains fragile, and its security environment is hardly stable. Pakistan is rising as a diplomatic operator, not as a hegemon. But that distinction should not obscure what is changing. In crises like this, the most important states are not always the strongest. They are often the ones that enough other actors can still use. That is precisely where Pakistan now sits. 

The real significance of Pakistan’s rise, then, is not prestige. It is structural. The old pattern on Iran — American pressure, Gulf relays, Iranian resistance — looks less workable in a war whose costs are now global and whose trust deficit is so deep. The emerging diplomacy is likely to be more layered: great powers in the background, regional states in the middle, and interface countries doing the practical work of communication and de-escalation. Pakistan has moved into that last category with surprising force. It is not leading the Middle East. But in the diplomacy now forming around Iran, it is becoming one of the states that will be hardest to bypass.

Related: The illusion of decapitation: Why killing Iran’s leaders strengthens the regime | Who decides when the Iran war ends?