In a conflict increasingly defined by escalation between the United States, Israel, and Iran, most states have responded in predictable ways, aligning with partners, hedging cautiously, or remaining silent. Pakistan’s response has been more complex. By simultaneously criticising military strikes on Iran, opposing Tehran’s actions in the Gulf, and offering itself as a diplomatic intermediary, it has adopted a posture that defies easy categorisation, not neutrality, but strategic balancing shaped by constraint and design.
At first glance, Pakistan’s position appears contradictory. It has condemned attacks on Iranian territory and described the targeting of Iranian leadership as a violation of international law. At the same time, it has criticised Iran’s retaliatory strikes across the Gulf. These positions reflect an attempt to engage all sides without being drawn fully into any camp. In a war that is steadily hardening into fixed blocs, Pakistan is attempting to operate outside them.
This balancing is rooted in necessity. With oil prices hovering above $90, Pakistan’s economic fragility leaves little room for geopolitical adventurism. A prolonged conflict that disrupts energy flows through the Gulf would strain its external account and deepen domestic pressures. For Islamabad, de-escalation is an economic imperative.
Since the start of the conflict, Pakistan’s diplomatic channels, from the Foreign Office to the Prime Minister’s Office, have remained unusually active, engaging with multiple stakeholders and reflecting its unique position and the expectations being placed on it. As tensions escalated in the Gulf, concerns over disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz triggered fears of a petroleum shortage in Pakistan.
For a country already under economic strain, even a temporary disruption could have immediate domestic consequences. Yet, through sustained diplomatic engagement, Pakistan has so far managed to ensure continued access for its vessels, many carrying oil from the Arab world.
In this sense, the conflict has increasingly taken on the characteristics of a petro-war, where control over energy flows is as consequential as military positioning. In navigating this dimension while remaining engaged with all sides, Pakistan has not only safeguarded its immediate interests but also reinforced its credibility with key stakeholders, not as a bystander, but as a credible and serious intermediary.
Where others remain constrained by alliance structures or geopolitical alignments, Pakistan has leveraged its position across multiple axes, maintaining ties with Washington, preserving channels with Tehran, and coordinating with Gulf partners
The security dimension is even more immediate. A destabilised Iran would not remain contained within its borders. For Pakistan, it risks reigniting insurgent dynamics in Balochistan, where cross-border linkages have historically blurred the line between internal and regional security. Any prolonged weakening of Iranian state control would create openings that Pakistan cannot afford. Stability in Iran is tied directly to Pakistan’s internal security calculus.
These constraints also shape Pakistan’s approach to its Gulf partners. With longstanding security ties to Saudi Arabia and deep domestic sensitivities, including one of the world’s largest Shia populations, Islamabad has strong incentives to prevent the conflict from widening into a broader regional confrontation.
This urgency has been visible in practice: high-level contacts between Islamabad and Gulf capitals, including recent engagements in Riyadh, have focused on containing escalation and signalling restraint. Pakistan’s role, therefore, has not been limited to managing its own position, but to actively working to keep the region from tipping into a wider conflict.
This concern is not unique to Pakistan. Countries like Turkey, wary of Kurdish insurgent spillovers, also seek to prevent Iran’s fragmentation. But where others remain constrained by alliance structures or geopolitical alignments, Pakistan has leveraged its position across multiple axes, maintaining ties with Washington, preserving channels with Tehran, and coordinating with Gulf partners to carve out space for mediation.
NATO-linked states such as Turkey carry institutional alignments that complicate their neutrality in Tehran’s eyes, while Arab capitals remain closely tied to Gulf security frameworks. Pakistan, by contrast, sits at the intersection of these divides without being fully absorbed by any of them.
This has not been incidental, but is the result of sustained engagement across competing power centres, allowing Pakistan to retain access where others have gradually lost it. During COAS Asim Munir’s meeting with Donald Trump last year, Pakistan’s familiarity with Iran was acknowledged, with Trump noting that Pakistan “knows Iran very well”.
Its relationships with the United States, China, Iran, and the Gulf are not without tension, but they provide a rare ability to communicate across otherwise hardened lines.
What may appear today as tactical positioning is, in fact, part of a longer pattern. During the Iran–Iraq War, Pakistan deployed nearly 40,000 troops to Saudi Arabia, an ally of Iraq, to protect the kingdom from potential spillover of both the conflict and the political aftershocks of the Iranian Revolution, even as it quietly continued supporting Iran, including through aid shipments to Tehran, as I am told by a former diplomat who served in Tehran during that time.
It neither severed links nor allowed itself to be fully drawn into the region’s sectarian and strategic fault lines. That experience reflects a broader tendency in Pakistan’s foreign policy: external partnerships do not always translate into full alignment.
In an increasingly fragmented world, where alliances are less rigid and conflicts more diffuse, the ability to operate across divides may become less of an exception and more of a necessity
Even in more recent conflicts, Islamabad maintained its normal diplomatic relations with Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria until his fall. This reflected a preference for preserving state-to-state relations over adopting bloc-driven positions, pointing to a recurring effort to retain room for manoeuvre. Similarly, even where its closest strategic partner, China, emphasised restraint and engagement with the Taliban, Pakistan has not hesitated to take unilateral security actions when its internal stability was threatened.
Seen in this context, Pakistan’s current posture is less an exception than an evolution. It reflects a form of cross-bloc balancing, engaging with competing power centres while resisting absorption into any single one. For a country often described as reactive in its external behaviour, this marks a more calibrated approach: engaging all, aligning with none.
Yet, even as Pakistan assumes this role, its significance is being understated both internationally and at home. There is a tendency to dismiss such positioning as incidental or as a by-product of circumstance rather than statecraft. Pakistan’s ability to operate across competing camps, to maintain channels where others cannot, and to position itself as a credible intermediary is not accidental. It reflects institutional memory, diplomatic calibration, and a willingness to act with restraint when escalation might have been easier.
In recent years, Pakistan has deliberately expanded its diplomatic space, navigating crises and recalibrating relationships beyond its immediate neighbourhood. Moments of regional tension, including its recent stand-off with India, have reinforced a perception that Pakistan is prepared to act decisively when circumstances demand it, even when the consequences are not guaranteed to be favourable.
This has also been reflected in its security posture to the west, where Islamabad has shown a willingness to pursue its counterterrorism priorities despite the complexities of dealing with the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. In global politics, respect is often reserved for those with either wealth or those willing to shape outcomes when the stakes are high, and Pakistan, at the moment, is the latter.
There are, of course, limits to how far this balancing can be sustained. Domestic pressures, economic vulnerabilities, and the risk of escalation all constrain Pakistan’s room for manoeuvre. Mediation, too, is contingent on acceptance by all parties. But the significance of Pakistan’s role lies not only in whether it succeeds in bringing adversaries to the table, but in how it is choosing to position itself in the first place.
Pakistan, in this moment, is not merely navigating a crisis; it is shaping its consequences. If it succeeds in the mediation, analysts believe Pakistan’s takeaway from the conflict would be more than just global recognition.
As the conflict unfolds, the more important question may not be whether Pakistan can sustain this balancing act, but whether more states will be compelled to adopt similar strategies. In an increasingly fragmented world, where alliances are less rigid and conflicts more diffuse, the ability to operate across divides may become less of an exception and more of a necessity. Pakistan, for now, appears to be testing what that future might look like.