Pakistan’s ability to thread the needle in relations with the US and Iran tested by the Israel-Iran war

The announcement of a cease-fire between Iran and Israel, after 12 days of war, was met with relief in Pakistan. As tensions escalated between the two archrivals, particularly following the June 21 US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Pakistan’s geopolitical importance suddenly increased. Both Tehran and Washington expected Islamabad to side with their respective positions. The United States hoped to have Pakistan’s understanding of its decision to use force to destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. Whereas Iran counted on Pakistan to stand with it against Israeli and American efforts to deny it the right to pursue what it continues to claim is a peaceful energy policy. This situation placed the Pakistani government in a politically sensitive and diplomatically delicate position. On the one hand, it was in the process of strengthening its strategic ties with the US. On the other, it did not wish to abandon the principle of supporting the self-determination of a neighboring Muslim country. Also, an attack that could destabilize Iran left the possibility of triggering a severe crisis within Pakistan. Terrorist groups already active in the restive Balochistan region, which straddles Iran and Pakistan’s shared border, could exploit the chaos, escalate attacks, and attempt to take control of ungoverned or weakened frontier areas.

Despite all these concerns, the long-running Iran-Israel conflict had never posed such a significant domestic challenge for Pakistan’s civil-military establishment as it did this time. Just a day before the US strike, Pakistan had nominated President Donald Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, citing his “decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership” during the recent four-day war between India and Pakistan. The timing could not have been worse, and a wide range of political voices in Pakistan criticized the civil-military establishment for appearing to appease the US and abandoning a neighboring Muslim country just as one was attacking the other. However, without delay, the Pakistani government condemned the strikes, calling them “deeply disturbing” and a breach of international norms. The Foreign Office added its grave concern about the potential for further escalation, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif phoned Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to affirm Pakistan’s support.

But Islamabad’s backing was clearly measured. Ignoring domestic pressure to provide Iran with security assistance, Islamabad limited its response to the attacks to rhetorical and symbolic support. In truth, while in recent years there has been a relaxation in bilateral relations between Iran and several of its neighbors, presumably no state in the region welcomes the prospects of a nuclear-armed Iran, and some leaders are privately thought to be supportive of US actions. Public criticisms appear aimed mainly at managing domestic public opinion and preserving diplomatic options.

Most recently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a call with Prime Minister Sharif, during which both agreed to work together to achieve a durable peace between Iran and Israel. Meanwhile, Iran’s military chief, Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, called Pakistan’s Army head, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to thank Pakistan for taking a courageous stance and supporting Iran during its 12-day war with Israel. Pakistan’s ability to simultaneously maintain constructive ties with Iran and the US places it in a strategically important position to bridge divides and serve as a credible mediator between the two.

Pakistan is skilled in threading such diplomatic needles. Over the past several decades, it successfully preserved a balanced relationship with deep rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, and it managed to remain on friendly terms with often mutually antagonistic Arab states. For a period of 20 years, its governments facilitated US military operations in Afghanistan while also keeping faith with its client Afghan insurgents. Pakistan also resisted without seeming to outright reject the idea that its nuclear program should be treated as an Islamic one. As US-China relations have become more contentious in recent years, Islamabad, which won plaudits for its role in the 1971 reproachment, has demonstrated its diplomatic skills in avoiding having to choose sides.

Strongly negative sentiment in Pakistan toward the United States has long been ingrained into popular attitudes, fueled in recent years by the political opposition’s various anti-American conspiracy theories and spiked most recently by a US alignment with Israel’s policies in Gaza. Through it all, however, civil-military authorities in Islamabad have worked to normalize as much as possible their relationship with Washington. The government had visibly chafed under the policies of President Joe Biden’s administration, which had marginalized Pakistan as a regional actor and narrowly defined bilateral relations. Many in the country took special umbrage over Biden’s refusal to establish personal contact with Pakistan’s civilian leadership. Only lingering US concerns over the resurgence of global terrorism in the region seemed to have kept Pakistan on Washington’s radar.

In contrast, President Donald Trump’s administration is seen as offering a fresh start for US-Pakistani relations. Islamabad was delighted to hear the president single out Pakistan for praise in his April 2025 address before a joint session of the US Congress for its contribution to nabbing a high-value terrorist. Leaning on Trump’s comments, many in the Pakistani government and military envisioned a US administration now ready to take an active role in resolving the Kashmir dispute. Others expressed optimism that the US would use its assumed influence over the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to soften the IMF’s strict demands on Pakistan. Moreover, some hoped that with Biden gone, Pakistan would now be free of the years of hectoring the US had subjected it to about its human rights record and democratic practices.

Trump’s foreign policy agenda — whose success he tends to measure by the extent of secured international transactions that aggrandize American national interests — has only slightly dimmed Pakistani expectations of a warmer relationship with Washington. Pakistan has been hit with the threat of high tariffs and travel restrictions. But thus far, it has reacted calmly and obligingly offered the US rare mineral concessions along with investment opportunities. Pakistan’s brief war with India last May also ended up indirectly furthering the improvement in ties with the US: the government in Islamabad was pleased at being treated by American mediators as equals with New Delhi. While India refuses to acknowledge a US role in ending the conflict, Pakistan has heaped praise on Trump, Rubio, and others.

A striking indication of the changed atmosphere was provided several days before the American bombing raid on Iran with the visit to Washington by Field Marshal Munir, effectively the most powerful figure in Pakistan. Munir was greeted warmly at the Pentagon by top brass and rewarded with a private lunch meeting with the US president. His visit came on the heels of a Pakistani diplomatic delegation that had successful meetings with officials at the State Department, seeking to shape Pakistan’s narrative of the recent four-day war with India. Those trips became a visible embarrassment, however, with the onset of the US armed intervention in Iran. Munir and the governing coalition suffered a political setback on which opposition elements quickly sought to capitalize. The more recent cease-fire between Iran and Israel brokered by Trump, on the other hand, seems to have offered a reprieve for Pakistan’s civil-military establishment.

The latest warming of relations between the United States and Pakistan may require a fuller explanation than can be understood in transactional terms. Seen against the background of intensifying American engagement in the Middle East and South Asia, as witnessed over the last several months, Washington may be grooming Pakistan to once more assume the close regional security partner role it played in the US’s Cold War alliance containment policy, the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and over the course of the post-2001 counter-insurgency campaign against the Afghan Taliban. In a region marked by ongoing volatility and intensifying great power competition, Pakistan could have much to offer the US: not only is it the Greater Middle East’s most populous Muslim country but also boasts its largest and most formidable military and is the Islamic world’s sole nuclear power. The Iran-Israel conflict thrust Pakistan back into the global spotlight, exacerbating the many foreign policy challenges it already faces. It remains to be seen how Pakistan will handle the complex and shifting international landscape.

Marvin G. Weinbaum is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and served as analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the US Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2003.

Naade Ali is currently serving as a Research Assistant to Dr. Weinbaum at MEI. He has more than five years of involvement working with international organizations and think tanks as a political researcher, policy advisor, peace strategist, and human rights practitioner with experience in human and national security, democratization, conflict resolution, and political culture. Prior to joining MEI, Ali worked with Media Foundation 360, a think tank dedicated to strengthening democratic practices in Pakistan.

Photo by AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images