Pakistan: The quiet broker

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from waiting for history to happen. More than your back hurting from catching flights, it’s the anxiety of staying ready to break the much-awaited news, every single hour, for weeks. Sometimes that moment sneaks up quietly on you, as it did on June 18, when the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding was signed electronically without prior notice. By that time, many of us had already congregated at the Burgenstock resort in Switzerland. Just as the adrenaline had kicked in, we waited by the lake, and we were met with news of cancellations. Iran linked any further talks to a complete ceasefire in Lebanon, and its top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned that Tehran would remain firm on its "red lines". These included a halt to Israeli strikes on Lebanon, alongside the release of frozen Iranian assets, the lifting of sanctions, and the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. For a moment, it looked like the whole process might unravel. 

The Pakistani leadership got down to business immediately, with the last-minute diplomacy that has defined this entire saga; Minister of Interior Mohsin Naqvi flew to Iran. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar to Cairo. And then, before you know it, the Prime Minister and Chief of Defense Forces were heading to Burgenstock to host US and Iranian delegations with the Qataris. There was still no clarity over what to expect; would it be a closed-door affair like it was in Islamabad, or would there be something for the cameras? We saw the Pakistanis meet the two delegations separately. That much we expected. But then the PM and CDF walk into the conference room, and we’re told the Americans and Iranians will join shortly. Everyone holds their breath. JD Vance and his delegation walk in – more relaxed than he was after addressing the media at the end of the Islamabad Talks. The Iranians also come, but exit after hugs and handshakes, almost like they’re here to honor their Pakistani friends. 

PM Shehbaz begins addressing the media. But JD Vance steals show: he jokes, “I have two very important people in my life - an Indian and a Pakistani. The Indian is my wife and the Pakistani is Field Marshal Asim Munir. I’ve probably talked more to Asim Munir more than I’ve talked to anyone else in the last three months.” That’s the most candid appreciation one can get in a diplomatic setting, and says a lot about the work at play to arrive at this moment, even if it’s not a final end to the war. In fact, the days leading up to itself are a case study on just how fragile this matter is. 

Over the past 3 months, I've spent nights at the office waiting for live blogs to refresh, for a message from someone who may know something I didn’t. I've hopped on flights with a few hours' notice, landed, and been told to turn around and fly straight back before I'd even unpacked. That alone tells you something: Pakistan is handling a matter so fragile that even the journalists covering it can't plan a single day in advance. World affairs can flip within seconds. I've shuffled in and out of security zones in Islamabad, then Bürgenstock, badge in hand, and sometimes still not allowed to get through, still not able to get the “scoop”. There’s something particularly nerve-wracking about being on the ground and still not able to tell what’s next. A breakthrough at 9pm could be a collapse by midnight. Not because the facts changed, but because one leader changed his mind. Or one, much further away than the negotiating rooms, was too stubborn to respect the very memorandum the world was trying to broker around him.

Bürgenstock itself seems designed for exactly this kind of waiting. The resort sits on a cliff above Lake Lucerne, the Alps rising behind it in snow-streaked lines that remind me of my own hilly home. There's water on three sides, and one road in as the only way up. It’s postcard scenery made secure by geography; a venue that is naturally sealed, easily controlled, and entirely removed from the noise of any capital. What helps is that it is also a Qatari property. 

And in the middle of all of it: Pakistan. Which is precisely where my question kept returning. Not "did they make a deal" because that much I could report. But what is Pakistan actually doing in those rooms? How do you mediate between a superpower that wants a quick, photogenic win and a regime that needs to look like it never bent? How do you offer off-ramps and manage hardliners on both sides, the people whose entire political survival depends on the deal being seen as a loss for the other? How do you talk the President of the United States out of threatening to wipe out a whole civilization? 

The Pakistani leadership keeps stepping in to stitch together a process that is weak at the seams. And I find myself wondering how many times this exact sequence – collapse, frantic phone calls, revival – will repeat before this is truly over. But more importantly, what’s happening on these trips? On one of Naqvi’s trips to Tehran, he carried a letter for Iran's new Supreme Leader. Hand delivered. What was in that letter? I don't know. And nobody will tell me. Perhaps, we’ll find out a few years down the road when this becomes history. So what's left to a journalist when the officials won’t talk and you can’t report in the interest of diplomacy? 

You work with what's visible. What happens behind those closed doors, structurally speaking, is usually some combination of bilateral meetings: restricted sessions between the principals, the experts, the note-takers. Breakout sessions, where smaller technical teams flesh out details neither side wants to negotiate in the main room. Banking officials in one room are arguing over unfreezing assets. Energy officials in another, working through the mechanics of lifting sanctions on oil exports. Pakistan and Qatar, as mediators, shuttling between rooms, carrying positions back and forth, working with language that suits both sides. No photos. No videos. No readouts. 

What I can deduce, instead, comes from counting. Count the trips: Munir's repeated flights to Tehran, sometimes arriving in full uniform to a warm embrace from Iran's foreign minister, and other times in civilian clothing; a statesman and a friend. Count Mohsin Naqvi's trips too: almost six separate visits to Iran since the war began, each one quieter than the last, but with important hints, such as carrying a hand-delivered letter for Iran's new Supreme Leader from Asim Munir. Count the phone calls made by Sharif and Dar, so many that some have called it a “call-a-thon”. Sharif worked the Gulf and beyond with the Saudi Crown Prince, Qatar's Amir twice in a single week, even the leaders of Japan, Canada, and Austria, while Dar ran a parallel circuit with Araghchi, Cairo, and Doha. Holding together a coalition scattered across multiple time zones. Then, Dar’s visit to China and the signing of a peace framework in March. Qatar running parallel back-channel talks in Doha. Saudi Arabia and Turkey lending weight to Pakistan’s efforts. Count the unlikely alliances: a Pakistani army chief and an American president who are now in direct, repeated contact. The Gulf hit badly, but willing to proceed with caution. 

None of that is confirmation of what to expect next. But it's evidence. And evidence, pieced together carefully, is sometimes the closest a journalist gets to the truth when the official channels stay shut.

Diplomats say this kind of work isn't about winning arguments, it's about giving people a way to say yes without looking weak. Pakistan's task was never simply to get the US and Iran to agree with each other. It was to get each side to agree on something that can survive scrutiny of domestic hardliners. And the work it takes to reach that level, even to get the opposing parties to convene at one location, is slow, invisible and unglamorous work. All it gives us are mere photo opportunities in front of a “summit” poster. But those visuals are proof of Pakistan’s hard work to keep this process from collapsing. 

And yet,  even as I write this, even as delegations sit in heavily guarded rooms drafting careful language, innocent people are dying. That's the part that sits uneasily with me every time I file a script about diplomatic wins. Because the reason for hiccups isn’t Tehran or Washington, it’s Israel. Even Vance and Trump have said as much: After the Beirut strike, Trump reportedly told Netanyahu, "What the f*** are you doing?" and warned him he was making "everybody hate Israel."

And that part of the story is important for Pakistan too. It shows that Pakistan's credibility here was never built on Switzerland-style neutrality. It was built on refusing to recognize Israel, condemning its war in Gaza, then Lebanon, then Iran. That could have come at a cost for Pakistan in Washington, but it certainly gained trust for it in Tehran. Underneath the diplomacy was a position held consistently, long before there was a war to mediate.

So perhaps the real story isn't just how Pakistan got two reluctant powers into a room. It did so while holding onto its own principles and guarded the process with grace. It quietly remained dedicated to peace while doing the heaviest lifting. And it doesn’t even need to say it out loud, a simple joke by JD Vance does the work. 

Ayesha Mir is a presenter at Pakistan TV Digital who has extensively covered the US-Iran conflict.