Amid the intensifying US-Israeli conflict with Iran and the ongoing strikes between the two sides, alongside the broader volatility in the Gulf, Pakistan has emerged as a key diplomatic player. Islamabad has proven highly engaged, playing a critical role by relaying a 15-point US peace plan to Tehran and repeatedly offering to host direct negotiations. These efforts are being hailed as the most coordinated regional initiative aimed at bringing Washington and Tehran to the negotiating table to date. This diplomatic maneuver is the crystallization of a posture Pakistan has been building across the entire Middle East and North Africa region: that of an indispensable middle power.
That posture belongs, in significant part, to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Since taking office in March 2024, Sharif has pursued an unusually activist foreign policy for a country that has long been consumed by its own economic and security crises. He met Donald Trump multiple times last year and Pakistan nominated the US president for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2025 and 2026.
Last September, Sharif signed the Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia, a strategic pact that has placed Pakistan firmly within the Gulf’s security architecture. The same month, he launched the second phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Beijing, signing 21 memorandums of understanding worth $8.5 billion covering agriculture, electric vehicles, solar energy and steel. He also revived a signature infrastructure commitment, including the ML-1 railway and the Gwadar Port expansion. The diplomatic calendar alone signals a leader who understands that Pakistan’s leverage lies in making itself strategic to multiple great powers simultaneously.
The structural foundations for this diplomacy are real. Pakistan shares a long land border with Iran, while maintaining deep historical ties with Washington: a combination that makes it one of the few capitals capable of credibly communicating with both. About 4.5 million diaspora members live in the Gulf, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE accounting for more than 54 percent of Pakistan’s total remittances.
Pakistan’s historical record reinforces its case, as it previously facilitated Richard Nixon’s secret opening to China in 1972, helped broker the 1988 Geneva Accords on the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and played a central role in the Taliban-Washington contacts that produced the 2020 Doha agreement.
Sharif understands that Pakistan’s leverage lies in making itself strategic to multiple great powers simultaneously.
Zaid M. Belbagi
The Iran crisis has, however, exposed the acute vulnerability that underpins this diplomatic ambition. Pakistan imports the vast majority of its oil and nearly all its liquefied natural gas, with more than 90 percent passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Its LNG supply is almost entirely sourced from Qatar, accounting for 6.6 million tonnes in 2025, leaving it dangerously concentrated.
When transit through the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted, the consequences were immediate. Petrol prices surged to $1.15 per liter and diesel to $1.20, a 20 percent jump in a single week, representing the largest fuel price increase in the country’s history. Sharif gave a televised emergency address in March, declaring the disruption a direct threat to Pakistan’s economy and announcing sweeping austerity and conservation measures. The energy crisis did not weaken Islamabad’s motivation to mediate; it sharpened it. Pakistan’s push for a ceasefire is inseparable from its need to reopen the arteries of its own economy.
There is a broader geopolitical architecture forming that Pakistan is positioning itself within. Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are developing a trilateral security framework. On the margins of the Iran crisis, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar flew to Beijing to seek Chinese endorsement of a five-point peace plan, which Beijing explicitly backed, describing Pakistan as a crucial diplomatic bridge for maintaining regional energy flows.
A quadrilateral meeting in Islamabad on March 29, bringing together Egypt, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, highlighted the mediation efforts. US lawmakers offered public praise, with Rep. Ryan Zinke applauding Pakistan’s leadership in delivering Trump’s peace plan. Iran’s ambassador in Islamabad also welcomed the initiative as a “friendly and brotherly” gesture.
On the geopolitical side, India is a key player in shaping Pakistan’s evolving strategic posture. As New Delhi deepens its ties with Israel and the UAE, Islamabad is consolidating its alignment with Riyadh, Ankara and Cairo. India’s growing partnership with Tel Aviv creates a fault line that Pakistan is deliberately exploiting, positioning itself as the anchor of an alternative network of Muslim-majority middle powers with overlapping security and economic interests. The asymmetry is real and the competition is intensifying.
Pakistan’s diplomatic engagement reflects a deliberate and sustained bid for structural relevance across the region.
Zaid M. Belbagi
Pakistan launched airstrikes into Afghanistan in February following a suicide bombing at a mosque in Islamabad that killed 36 people, a week of Balochistan Liberation Army attacks and the deaths of 11 soldiers at a Bajaur checkpoint. UN monitors confirmed that at least 13 civilians were killed in the initial Pakistani strikes.
The US publicly endorsed Pakistan’s “right to defend itself” against Taliban attacks — a political endorsement that also reflects how central Islamabad has become to American strategic calculations in the region. Pakistan received $397 million in US security aid in Trump’s first 100 days, a dramatic reversal from the near-suspension of recent years.
Domestically, the US director of national intelligence’s annual threat assessment under Tulsi Gabbard flagged Pakistan’s missile program as a potential risk — a reminder that Washington’s embrace remains conditional. However, solar investment helped Pakistan avoid about $12 billion in oil and gas imports by February this year as it begins to structurally reduce the energy dependence that leaves it so exposed.
But this alignment with different parties in the region comes with challenges too. As Umer Karim, a former visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, stated: “Strong ties with Saudi Arabia, particularly after the Pak-Saudi defense pact, and proximity with the Trump administration may eventually become a challenge for Pakistan. Especially if the current conflict further escalates and the Saudi side requests Pakistan join its defense against Iran and, similarly, if the US pressurizes it to provide support against Iran. So, this prominence for Pakistan may get it plaudits and global visibility, but it could also become a double-edged sword.”
Looking ahead, Pakistan’s diplomatic engagement extends well beyond the Iran crisis. It reflects a deliberate and sustained bid for structural relevance across the MENA region. Islamabad has demonstrated, in a short period, that it can simultaneously convene adversarial parties, carry messages between Washington and Tehran, lead a trilateral security framework with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, and bring Egypt into a coordinated regional dialogue. This is the result of a foreign policy posture, built by the Sharif government, that has methodically converted Pakistan’s geographic position, its Gulf diaspora, its cross-bloc relationships and its military weight into compounded diplomatic leverage.
BY: Writer Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator and an adviser to private clients between London and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect The Times Union‘ point of view
