President Trump loves to make mockery of peacemakers

By Zarmeen Hassan

Somewhere in the wreckage of a peace that never quite arrived, two officials sat across from each other and began crossing names off a list.

They were not names of people, but places Muscat, Doha, cities that had quietly hosted months of backchannel diplomacy between two powers that refused direct contact. For nearly a year, Oman had served as the discreet corridor of negotiation, passing messages between American and Iranian delegations. As recently as February 2026, talks there were described as constructive.

Then the bombs fell.

Iran struck Oman’s ports at Duqm and Salalah  targeting the very state that had tried to mediate. Qatar, too, came under threat, forcing it to step back from its role.

One by one, the mediators disappeared.

Somewhere beyond that room, the Strait of Hormuz sat closed. A contained conflict was widening. The clock was running.

One name remained on the list.It was not an obvious one.

It never is.

The name on the list was Pakistan.

Field Marshal Asim Munir called US President Trump on a Sunday. A day later, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called Iranian President Pezeshkian. Two calls. Two directions, Washington and Tehran.

At first glance, the role seems improbable. A country  economically fragile and politically strained yet it has stepped into a space vacated by more stable states.But improbable is not the same as unqualified.

Pakistan has the second largest Shia Muslim population in the world after Iran  between 15 and 20 percent of its 250 million people giving it a sectarian proximity to Tehran that most Sunni-majority states cannot claim. It also shares a 900-kilometre border with Iran running through Balochistan. Both countries have long accused each other of harbouring insurgents across their respective Baloch regions. Yet despite sanctions, bilateral trade    is reported to have reached approximately $1.4 billion in 2024-25. For Iran, a hostile Pakistan is not an abstraction. It is a second front.

For those who still question Pakistan as a mediator, the answer is simple: Pakistan has been in this position before. In 1971, it quitey facilitated Henry Kissimgers secret trip from Islamabad to Beijing , a diplomatic opening that reshaped the Cold war.The facilitator and the logic then, as now, was the same  a country trusted by both sides.

The 15-point plan had been drawn up in Washington and quietly arrived in Iran through the trusted mediator of both sides: Pakistan.

It was a blanket demand. Iran would never pursue nuclear weapons, dismantle its three nuclear facilities, surrender all enriched uranium, reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The centrepiece of the demand was to stop funding regional proxy groups;  Hamas, Hezbollah. In return, Iran would get something it had spent decades being denied: a full lifting of international sanctions and US assistance in developing Tehran’s civilian nuclear programme.

Where Trump in the Oval Office was ebullient, insisting Iran wanted a deal badly. Tehran’s answer arrived in an altogether different register. Iran’s military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said on state television: “People like us can never get along with people like you. Not now. Not ever.”

But behind that rhetoric was something more measured. Tehran did not simply reject the proposal, it responded with conditions of its own: calling for an end to attacks, guarantees against future escalations, war reparations,Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran was not refusing to negotiate. It was refusing to negotiate on Washington’s terms.

The day Iran rejected the proposal, the very same day, the Pentagon confirmed troop deployments to the Middle East. Trump had extended his Hormuz deadline to April 6  granting Iran a reprieve while thousands of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division were already moving toward the region. The same administration extending a diplomatic olive branch was simultaneously loading the gun. An irony of its own.

Israel, meanwhile, operated on separate timeline, pushing to prolong the conflict and degrade Iran’s military capabilities before any agreement could take hold.

This was the paradox at the heart of everything: a war being prosecuted and negotiated simultaneously, by actors who did not fully share the same objectives. The missiles were still flying. The diplomats were still talking. And somewhere between those two facts, in the narrow corridor where wars sometimes end, Pakistan was still carrying the message.

The talks have not happened yet. But diplomacy begins before the room is entered  and its centre of gravity had already shifted to Pakistan’s capital, where the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye joined Islamabad in preparing the ground for a possible direct US-Iran engagement.

If the efforts bear fruit and the talks succeed, the consequences will be felt far beyond the negotiating room.

For Iran, a successful agreement would mean economic re entry : restored oil exports, renewed investment, and relief from decades of sanctions. Crucially, Iran , would not enter such a deal as a defeated state, but as one that demonstrated its ability to disrupt a vital global artery. That distinction matters to a regime that has spent forty years insisting it cannot be broken.

For the world, the arithmetic is simpler. Brent crude surged past $120 a barrel when Hormuz closed. A reopened strait would reverse a supply shock that has begun to ripple through inflation rates, interest rate decisions and household budgets from Seoul to Stuttgart. The waterway does not need to stay open for long before markets remember what normal looks like.

And then there is what it would mean for Pakistan. As one Washington analyst put it: “After decades of being a troubled state, Pakistan appears to be re-emerging as a major American ally in West Asia.” If Islamabad can help broker even a temporary deal, it would be Pakistan’s most consequential diplomatic moment recasting it not as a peripheral actor, but as a pivotal one since 1971  and this time, the world would be watching.

The Strait remains closed. Missiles remain flying. No one knows whether the two powers that refuse to look each other in the eye would become history, or simply the theatre that precedes more war.

What is known is this: the name on the list was Pakistan. And for now, it has not been crossed out.