Pakistan, which was in an extremely precarious situation, politically, socially, economically and globally, has been given a new lease of life, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said. File | Photo credit: The Hindu
Congress on Tuesday (March 24, 2026) said that if the reports of Pakistan being one of the US-Israel-Iran mediators were true, then they represented a “serious obstacle” and a “rejection” to India.
The opposition party argued that despite India’s undoubted military successes in Operation Sindoor, the sad reality was that afterwards Pakistan’s diplomatic engagement and narrative management was “significantly better than the Modi government”.
Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said numerous reports in leading international media have identified Pakistan as one of the intermediaries used between the US and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other.
“If these reports are true, they represent a serious defeat and rejection of India – and all this can be attributed to the self-styled Vishwaguru,” Mr Ramesh said on X.
“For more than a year, it has been abundantly clear that despite our undoubted military successes in Operation Sindoor, the sad reality is that thereafter Pakistan’s diplomatic engagement and narrative management was significantly better than that of the Modi government,” he said.
Many reports in the leading international media have identified Pakistan as one of the intermediaries used between the US and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other.
If true, these reports represent a serious setback and rejection of India – and that is…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) March 24, 2026
Pakistan, which was in an extremely precarious situation, politically, socially, economically and globally, has been given a new lease of life, Mr. Ramesh said.
“President Trump has warmly and repeatedly embraced the man whose inflammatory and inflammatory rhetoric formed the backdrop for the Pahalgam terror attacks of April 22, 2025, and hosted Field Marshal Asim Munir at the White House twice (including an unprecedented lunch). The Pakistani establishment has developed a cozy relationship with President Trump’s inner circle,” he claimed.
“Mr. Modi’s ill-advised visit to Israel, which ended just two days before the unprovoked US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran, will go down in our political history as an extraordinarily disastrous choice – a choice that forced us to retreat from a position where we could and should have been a mediator,” the Congress leader said.
According to him, the Prime Minister’s “huglomation” has been brutally exposed and he added that the country is forced to pay a tax for it.
President Donald Trump said on Monday (March 23, 2026) that the US had spoken to a respected Iranian leader and said the Islamic Republic was eager for a deal to end the war, but Mr Trump refused to name the Iranian leader with whom the US is negotiating to end the three-week-old war, saying the partner was the country’s most respected person.
Speaking to reporters at Palm Beach International Airport in Florida, Mr Trump made it clear the US was not dealing with the second-in-command, a reference to Ayatollah Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei.
According to reports, Iran denied that it was negotiating with the US, but admitted that some countries in the region were trying to reduce tensions.
News website Axios cited a US source as saying that Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan have been passing messages between the US and Iran over the past two days.
The foreign ministers of the three countries held separate talks with White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a US source told Axios.
The president said Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy for West Asia, and Jared Kushner spoke with their Iranian counterparts on Sunday (March 22, 2026).
However, Mr Trump declined to say who Mr Witkoff spoke to, saying he did not want them killed.
Published – 24 Mar 2026 09:45 IST
