Is Pakistan a Logical Interlocutor With Iran?

Pakistan, a failed militarized state, is emerging as a global diplomatic hub, we are told. Islamabad claims that good ties with all the countries involved in the Iran war qualify it to mediate. Osama bin Laden was hiding there when he was killed, but Pakistan has since improved relations with America. Yet Islamabad’s venom toward our war ally, Israel, is as bad as the Islamic Republic’s “little Satan” language. How does that make it an honest broker?Even before the arrival of delegations from Washington and Tehran at the Pakistani capital today, a ceasefire agreement brokered by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif earlier this week is exposed as full of holes. President Trump, who first announced the deal on Monday, conditioned it on free passage to all in the Strait of Hormuz. As of this writing, Iran tightly restricts traffic in the strait. Did Pakistan deliver on its ties to Tehran?An hour after Mr. Trump announced the ceasefire breakthrough, Mr. Sharif added a new condition, which is also favored by the Iranian mullahs. He contended that a ceasefire must include an end to Israel’s fight to disarm Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. Mr. Trump described it as a “separate skirmish” from the war on Iran. Mr. Sharif stressed that Lebanon was included in the deal, but didn’t mention the Gulf states. Why?That is because Pakistan’s hatred of Jews is indistinguishable from that of the Tehran Mullahs. “Israel is evil and a curse for humanity,” the Pakistani defense minister, Khawaja Asif, wrote on Thursday in a now-deleted X posting. “While peace talks are underway in Islamabad, genocide is being committed in Lebanon,” he averred. “I hope and pray people who created this cancerous state on Palestinian land to get rid of European jews burn in hell.”Must such sentiments be ignored? Pakistan is in a position to mediate peace because it “has channels of communications open with all the parties and other relevant actors,” its ambassador at the United Nations, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, tells our Benny Avni. He names America, Iran, the Gulf states, Egypt, and Turkey. He skips that other relevant actor, which happens to be America’s staunchest war ally. For half a century the Jewish state has lived under constant assault orchestrated by the Tehran mullahs. Yet America’s chattering classes increasingly seem to consider Israel “cancerous” too. The New York Times recently described a White House situation room meeting in which Prime Minister Netanayahu was present. The piece’s gist was that war-mongering Bibi was leading Mr. Trump by the nose to wage an unwinnable adventure that can only benefit Israel. Yet what about those nuclear-armed Pakistanis? Can a South Asian capital named for its religiosity claim a better alliance with America than Jerusalem? Is Pakistan’s strongman, Field Marshal Asim Munir, really a logical interlocutor for peace? Pakistan seems eager to push Mr. Trump to give in to Iran’s demands even as the mullahs chant “death to America.” The defense minister may have deleted his posting on X. His sentiments, though, are disqualifying.

Is Pakistan a Logical Interlocutor With Iran?

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