Pakistan Says it Will Host US-Iran Talks After Türkiye, Egypt, Saudi Diplomats Meet in Islamabad
New Delhi: Pakistan announced on March 29 that it would soon host talks between the US and Iran.
"Pakistan is very happy that both Iran and the US have expressed their confidence in Pakistan to facilitate the talks. Pakistan will be honoured to host and facilitate meaningful talks between the two sides in the coming days,” Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said after top diplomats from Türkiye, Egypt and Saudi Arabia met in Islamabad.
While the talks were originally scheduled to continue Monday, Pakistan is reported to have said that diplomats had departed for their home countries.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the ministers had discussed ways to enhance cooperation during this conflict.
“The ministers also exchanged assessments on the dire economic repercussions of the military escalation in the region, its effects on international navigation, supply chains, and food security, as well as its implications for energy security in light of rising oil and energy prices,” it read.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had posted on X on March 28 that he had a “detailed telephone conversation with my brother President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran earlier today, lasting over one hour”, as part of preparations for the Islamabad talks.
It is not yet clear whether US-Iran discussions on the monthlong war would be direct or indirect.
US President Donald Trump did not address the potential Pakistan talks but said on Sunday (March 29) night that Washington was in discussions with Iran and “we’re doing extremely well in that negotiation.”
Meanwhile, Trump has told Financial Times in an interview, “To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran
but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people.”
Islamabad has emerged as a mediator, having relatively good ties with Washington and Tehran, after what Pakistani officials call weeks of quiet diplomacy.
Earlier, Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, dismissed the talks in Pakistan as a cover after some 2,500 US Marines trained in amphibious landings arrived in West Asia. He said Iranian forces were “waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever,” according to state media.
Pakistan's ability to play interlocutor in this high-stakes conflict is not the best news for India. As Rahul Bedi notes on The Wire, "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."
Another analysis noted how for a decade, the cornerstone of Modi’s foreign policy has been the attempt to render Pakistan diplomatically irrelevant and this news proves that the strategy has failed spectacularly.
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