While there is no shortage of opinions on how Pakistan has managed to “insert” itself into the Iran-U.S. quagmire, nobody is calling out the elephant in the room, i.e., Israel. It has now been extensively reported and even acknowledged, in not so many words, by Marco Rubio after his briefing to Congress that Israel persuaded Trump to cross the Rubicon.
As crisis after crisis unfolds in real time, it is clear that the decision to pull the plug on this misadventure rests solely with the U.S. and that Israel, while it stands locked and loaded to strike Iran, must be kept out of the negotiating process. Pakistan has come forward as the only nation in the neighborhood with a zero-tolerance Israel policy and a steadfast stance on spurning overtures to normalize with Israel notwithstanding favorable comparisons of a similar genesis story of both countries being created for religious reasons.
Israel’s strategy of sabotaging peace negotiations is yet another cogent reminder of why it falls on Pakistan to carry the onerous role of mediator. Doha was bombed by Israel just as the Iranian negotiators met there with U.S. approval, but Islamabad is situated outside Tel Aviv’s target range.
Optics are everywhere in these unfolding negotiations and the high-powered Iranian delegation was escorted through airspace by Pakistan Air Force JF-17 Thunder jets that had just a year ago proven their deadly precision against Indian jet fighters. GCC countries have seen their security cover blown to bits by Iranian missiles and drone strikes. Egypt, though fully engaged on the diplomatic front, does not share a common border with Iran and so the to-and-fro of Iranian negotiators falls sensibly within Pakistani purview.
So the next time analysts look on in amazement as the Pakistanis are branded “sole negotiators” in any present and future peace negotiations, perhaps it would be wise to call out the elephant in the room, the repeat offender who has torpedoed peace efforts in the region, whose genocidal war on Gaza has stripped it of any vestiges of humanity, whose actions Pakistan has condemned boldly, and against whose aggression this fragile peace process must be undertaken.
A trigger-happy nation with its “Greater Israel” game plan has been excluded from the negotiating table whether by design—with Trump desperately seeking an offramp prior to elections—or by necessity, since Pakistan does not have diplomatic relations with the offending country, or maybe even both. But this welcome coincidence of Israel’s exclusion might yet prove to be the game changer for a tenuous peace process unfolding precariously in Pakistan.
Bakhtyar is Culture Editor of The Standard.