[BBC] As Pakistan celebrates its success in helping negotiate a two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran, its leaders are preparing to host the peace talks.
A two-day holiday was declared in the country's capital of Islamabad ahead of the talks, which are due to begin on Saturday.
Whether or not they will actually go ahead has yet to be confirmed, but the city has readied itself all the same. The streets have become quieter as about 10,000 police officers and security forces are deployed.
The stakes for the world are high – countries across the globe are keen to see an end to the fighting and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery where about 20% of the global oil supply flowed through before the war.
But they are also high for Pakistan in other ways.
Islamabad's streets have become quieter as police officers and security forces are deployed in readiness for US-Iran peace talks
The South Asian nation will face a potential "nightmare scenario" if negotiations collapse, and it gets dragged into fighting with its neighbour Iran, says Abdul Basit, a South Asia expert at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. This could happen as Pakistan signed a mutual defence pact with Saudi Arabia last year - and Islamabad has since "made it clear that it will honour its commitment given to the Saudis", says Basit.
This could result in "three borders of Pakistan [becoming] hot", Basit explains, referring to Pakistan's existing tensions with its other neighbours Afghanistan and India. "And Pakistan is fighting two full-fledged insurgencies in two of the four provinces. Pakistan cannot afford that."
The success is very much needed for a country that has endured years of political unrest, a fragile economy on the brink of a debt default only two years ago, and intense rivalry with India.
So how did Pakistan pull off this feat?
TRUMP FAVOURITE
Pakistan is in a unique position as it is trusted by the US, Iran and the Gulf countries.
The reconciliation process is led by Pakistan's military chief Asim Munir, whom US President Donald Trump calls his "favourite field marshal", according to Mushahid Hussain Syed, a senator belonging to the ruling party Pakistan Muslim League.
Munir is arguably the most powerful man in Pakistan, a country where the army has long played a predominant role in politics.
Soon after the start of Trump's second term, Munir started building rapport with the US president and gave him "two early wins", says Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistan ambassador to the US and UN.
The field marshal, acting on CIA intelligence, handed over the alleged mastermind behind the 2021 Kabul airport bombing when Americans were evacuating from Afghanistan. The suicide attack killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 US service members.
"Trump was so grateful that he mentioned this in his first address to the Congress," Lodhi says.
The alleged mastermind behind the 2021 Kabul airport bombing was handed to the US soon after the start of Donald Trump's second term as president
The second win, Lodhi says, was "the way Pakistan conveyed to him that he had played a pivotal role in preventing a wider war with India". Pakistan is one of the few countries that have nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize – which he has long coveted.
"Remember that Trump wasn't really getting much joy from the tariff war that he was imposing practically on every country in the world. So, he really needed what he got from Pakistan."
Pakistan has also promised access to its critical minerals, which the US sees as a national-security interest. In September 2025, Pakistan's Frontier Works Organisation – the country's major miner of critical minerals, which operates under the military – signed a $500m investment deal with a US company. The ceremony took place at the Prime Minister House, with Munir in attendance.
Then, in January, Pakistan signed an agreement with an affiliate of World Liberty Financials, the cryptocurrency venture co-founded by Trump and his family, which will potentially integrate its stablecoin into the country's digital-payment system. It has bolstered the country's ties with Trump's circle too.
'PRINCIPLED STANCE'
However, these close ties did not stop Pakistan officially condemning the first US-Israeli attacks in Iran. But when Iran bombed the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, a military ally, Pakistan also issued a strongly worded statement against Iran.
On 7 April, Pakistan abstained from a UN Security Council resolution urging states to coordinate efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Syed calls it "one-sided" as the solution does not mention that the US and Israel attacked first.
This "principled stance" and "balanced approach" has helped to enhance the trust of Iran and other Gulf countries, says Syed.
It is with these countries that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has played a crucial role in the negotiations, former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Aizaz Chaudhry says.
Over the past five weeks, Sharif and his deputy, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, spoke with more than a dozen world leaders and senior officials in Washington, Moscow, Beijing, key European capitals, Turkey, Egypt and GCC states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
On the day when the ceasefire was announced, Sharif said he had a "warm and substantive conversation" with Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, who "reaffirmed Iran's participation in the upcoming negotiations and expressed appreciation for Pakistan's efforts".
It seems Sharif has been able to leverage Pakistan's long-standing relationship with Iran on this occasion. The two countries share a 920km border with Iran and have been cooperating for decades as a result, former Pakistan ambassador to Iran Asif Durrani says.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
04/10/2026 10:18 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
This is Tehran now. They are not Iranians. They don’t speak our language. They are Hashd Al shabi jihadists from Iraq speaking Arabic.
Iran does not have a “government” that somehow kills “its own people”. Iran is under Arab-Islamic occupation for 47 years. The Ayatollahs just… pic.twitter.com/6JCxv1U4uu
— Gazelle غزاله شارمهد (@GazelleSharmahd) April 10, 2026
[Jpost] Even as the US and Iran seek to cement a ceasefire, Israel is seizing more territory from its neighbors in preparation for a long, drawn-out conflict across the Middle East.
Israel's creation of "buffer zones" in Gaza, Syria, and now Lebanon reflects a strategic shift after the attacks of October 7, 2023, one that puts the country in a semi-permanent state of war, six Israeli military and defense officials told Reuters.
The approach also acknowledges a reality the officials said had become increasingly clear after two-and-a-half years of conflict: Iran's clerical leadership, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and terrorist groups across the region cannot be eliminated outright.
"Israel's leaders have concluded that they are in a forever war against adversaries who have to be intimidated and even dispersed," said Nathan Brown, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The US and Iran agreed on Wednesday to a pause in fighting while they negotiate a broader end to the war, which erupted on February 28. Israel agreed to halt its attacks on Iran but says it will not stop its campaign against Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
Hezbollah joined the war on March 2 by firing rockets at Israel, which then launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon to clear a buffer zone up to the Litani River - a broad swathe of land that makes up about 8% of Lebanese territory.
Israel has ordered the area's hundreds of thousands of residents to flee and is in the early stages of destroying homes in Shi'ite Muslim villages that it believes have been used by Hezbollah to store weapons or stage attacks.
A senior military official, who requested anonymity to discuss security matters, said the aim was to "clear" an area stretching 5-10 km beyond the border, putting Israeli border towns out of range of Hezbollah rocket-propelled grenade fire.
In some Lebanese villages close to the border, Israeli troops found evidence that nearly 90% of homes contain weapons or equipment linking them to Hezbollah, the official said.
That means the homes are viewed as enemy military positions that must be destroyed, according to the official who said that many southern Lebanese villages sat on hilltops, giving them a direct line of sight into Israeli towns or army positions.
The use of buffer zones represents a new security doctrine that "border communities cannot be protected from the border," according to Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general and former head of military strategy.
Posted by: Grom the Affective ||
04/10/2026 00:00 ||
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#1
Is there a difference between 'forever war' and 'since 1948 war'?
[YouTube] How did the US pull off one of the most daring rescue operations in history, deep behind enemy lines?
It comes down to a strict code the US military lives by: leave no man behind.
They will literally send dozens of attack helicopters and over a hundred Special Forces and Delta operators just to bring one person home.
The mission started when an aircraft went down.
After both crew members ejected, the pilot was successfully extracted, but the Weapons Systems Officer was injured and stranded. His survival training instantly kicked in. He trekked all the way up to a rugged, mountainous ridge and activated his beacon, just as IRGC militias began closing in on the crash site.
But the CIA was one step ahead.
They initiated a massive deception tactic—a ruse designed to make the IRGC search entirely the wrong location.
When the enemy forces finally realized they had been tricked, all hell broke loose. They swarmed the mountainous ridge, surrounding the injured officer.
Just in time, Special Forces swooped in on Little Bird helicopters, laying down heavy covering fire alongside A-10 Thunderbolts and MQ-9 Reaper drones.
But as they moved toward the extraction point, everything went wrong... proving the military is willing to burn a $100 million aircraft just to save a single fallen comrade.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
04/10/2026 00:00 ||
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[1801 views]
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#1
I did not know that the A-10 pilot ended up on the ground in Iran.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
04/10/2026 21:12 Comments ||
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