A deeper look into Pakistan’s 111 days of mediation between Washington and Tehran

ISLAMABAD: In a hotel suite in Bürgenstock, Switzerland, two governments that had spent more than three months trying to destroy each other's military capabilities, navy, and oil trade finally let a ceasefire framework take effect, because one country never stopped mediating for peace.

The short version, repeated in capitals from Washington to Tehran, was that Pakistan brokered it. The longer version is a story told in phone logs and flight manifests. For over 111 days, Pakistan's leadership carried out around 250 high-level diplomatic engagements, including 170 phone calls and 80 in-person meetings, according to Pakistan TV Digital’s compilation of information released by government sources. Pakistan further engaged 49 countries across five continents and five multilateral bodies, from the UN and EU to the GCC and the Commonwealth. 

How the war started

The US and Israel launched air strikes against Iran on February 28, 2026, which killed Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran responded promptly by attacking American bases across the region with missiles and drones, hitting multiple countries simultaneously in the Middle East, including Israel. Iran also choked the Strait of Hormuz, the channel through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil and gas trade passes, a single decision that sent energy markets into a panic and turned a bilateral war into a global economic emergency within days. 

Within days of the first strikes, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar were calling regional leaders, pressing capitals across the Gulf and the wider Islamic world for restraint before the war could spread beyond containment.

The war widens

For weeks, that diplomacy ran alongside, not ahead of, the fighting. Iran widened the war by launching drone and missile strikes against six Gulf states accused of hosting American assets. Tehran also threatened to close the Bab el-Mandeb as well as Hormuz, dragging Yemen's Houthis back into the fray. The death toll climbed past a thousand in Iran alone, with thousands more dead in Lebanon as Israel's campaign against Hezbollah reignited in parallel.

"Pakistan did not just stop the US-Iran war, but a regional war," said Shaukat Piracha to Pakistan TV Digital while commenting on the war, underpinning just how many fronts Islamabad was managing at once.

On April 7, Donald Trump threatened that "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back" if Iran did not move toward a deal. 

The first breakthrough

On April 8, PM Sharif announced that Pakistan had secured a ceasefire between the United States and Iran, the first real pause since February 28. From here, the scale of Pakistani diplomacy only grew, shifting from emergency calls into sustained engagement with regional leaders, China, Russia, Europe, along with the US and Iran, running in parallel.

The Islamabad talks

The centrepiece came on April 11 and 12, when Pakistan hosted direct talks in Islamabad between a roughly 300-member US delegation led by Vice President JD Vance and a 70-member Iranian team led by parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the highest-level direct US-Iran engagement since 1979. 

Chaired by PM Sharif, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and FM Dar, the talks ran for 21 hours across three rounds and ended without a deal, with Washington announcing a naval blockade within a day. 

But the marathon, even in failure, left behind a precedent, that direct talks were possible, and a Pakistani channel both sides kept returning to, even when, progress looked dead from the outside.

Behind the scenes

What followed was, by most accounts, the densest stretch of the mediation. Sharif, Dar, and Munir moved between Riyadh, Doha, Ankara, Beijing, Moscow, Cairo, Tehran, and Washington, running a parallel track of near-daily phone diplomacy. 

The Field Marshal traveled to Tehran twice for security talks while stayed engaged in phone calls continuously, as PM Sharif later told the National Assembly, Munir stayed “awake all day and night” during the periods when talks looked closest to collapse. 

Pakistan and China issued a joint five-point initiative for de-escalation in late March. The R4 grouping, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Egypt, met repeatedly to coordinate a unified Islamic-world position. 

Pakistan's Foreign Minister attended the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, held a UN Security Council open debate appearance in New York, and met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington. 

The Prime Minister visited Beijing to secure Chinese President Xi Jinping's backing for the mediation. The European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, came to Islamabad to co-chair a strategic dialogue. 

By June, Pakistani officials were fielding calls and meetings with counterparts from Somalia to Switzerland, coordinating the final language of an agreement that, for months, had seemed perpetually close and out of reach.

The breakthrough

On June 14, Pakistan announced that the US and Iran had agreed on a framework, the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, a 14-point deal providing for an end to military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon, a lifting of the dual blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, and a 60-day window for follow-on talks over Iran's nuclear programme and frozen assets. 

Sharif announced it to the National Assembly past midnight, calling it "not merely an agreement between two countries, but a triumph of peace and diplomacy," and crediting Munir's "extraordinary role" in keeping talks alive. The document was signed electronically by Presidents Trump and Pezeshkian on June 17, with Iran's Supreme National Security Council confirming that fighting on every front would stop immediately.