The fact that Pakistan has become Washington’s chosen mediator for talks with Iran can be explained in many ways. Since Operation Sindoor in May 2025, US President Donald Trump has been flattered by Pakistan’s description of him as a “peacemaker” and has reportedly developed a personal relationship with Pakistan’s Field Marshal General Asim Munir and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and has met them many times.
Notably, Mr Trump hosted General Munir for lunch at the White House in June last year, amid the latest US-Israel strikes in June 2025, allegedly in an attempt to ensure Pakistan would not militarily support Iran.
Pakistan’s offer of a critical mineral deal to the United States and its decision to join the Gaza Peace Council (BoP) also helped cement the relationship.
For Iran, Pakistan’s advantage over many other possible mediators is not only its proximity, but also the fact that it does not recognize Israel and is therefore not amenable to concerns or overtures from the Netanyahu government. That may suit even Mr Trump, who is said to have handed the government in Tehran a 15-point proposal that he hopes will lead to a ceasefire.
But Washington’s decision to engage Pakistan as a mediator may also be rooted in history, given Islamabad and the general’s other role in facilitating US talks with China 55 years ago at the height of the Cold War.
At the time, US President Richard Nixon began working on his plan to open relations with Beijing (the US still formally recognized Taiwan as the Republic of China (ROC)), but direct Sino-US ambassadorial negotiations failed. Pakistan was not the first option, as he and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger considered others, including Poland, France and Romania.
Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), rejected France’s idea because he wanted a “non-Western” channel. The Warsaw Pact fell apart after two rounds of negotiations between American and Chinese officials when Mao Zedong protested American attacks on Cambodia as part of an effort by the US military to cut off supplies to Vietnamese troops.
While Nixon needed partners in Asia as the Vietnam War was draining the US, prompting him to seek China, Sino-Soviet tensions gave Mr. Mao reason to negotiate with Washington.
The US tried Romania, in cooperation with President Nicolai Ceausescu, to reach out to the Chinese government, but ran into an unexpected block. “We went to the Romanians thinking they were the most independent of the Eastern Europeans and that they were communists, and that’s why the Chinese would want them. It turned out that one group the Chinese didn’t trust were the communists,” Kissinger told journalist Tom Brokaw a decade later, explaining that Beijing feared Romanian officials would leak details to the Kremlin, which would try to sabotage the process.
By then, Mr. Nixon had also established a secret channel to the leadership of the PRC through the Pakistani president, General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, whom he first met during a state visit to Pakistan in 1969. “Khan was an attractive intermediary to Nixon because he had good relations with both the United States and the PRC leaders, and he also feared that Nixon’s State Department would provide the means to oppose or publicize his initiative,” the U.S. Historian’s Office said in a note. about opening in China.
According to one report, the White House sent two identical notes, one through President Yahya Khan and the other through President Ceausescu, but it was Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, Agha Hilaly, who returned with a response first, a full month before his Romanian counterpart. In July 1971, Mr. Kissinger traveled to Pakistan, where he feigned illness and was taken to Nathiagali (near Murree), away from the eyes of journalists and even his own diplomats in Islamabad. Gene. Khan arranged for PIA commercial flight 707 to take him from Rawalpindi to Peking (Beijing) for the meeting.
Mr Kissinger, who had been hosted by Indian officials the day before, reportedly used the “Delhi Belly” as his excuse to arrange a 64-hour escape that included his first meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and other officials in China. Planning began for Mr. Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972, which he referred to as “the week that changed the world.”
This event had a profound and lasting impact on South Asia as well. Mr. Nixon’s preoccupation with his back channel to China and deep-seated resentment of India decided to turn a blind eye when Pakistani troops unleashed genocide on Bengal in East Pakistan. On March 25, 1971, the Pakistani military launched Operation Searchlight, killing an estimated three million people over the next nine months, according to the Bangladeshi government.
On April 28, 1971, Mr. Kissinger sent a message to Mr. Nixon detailing the options before the US: (1) support Pakistan militarily; (2) maintain neutrality; (3) to help “Yahya reach a negotiated settlement”.
Mr. Nixon’s instructions, despite desperate telegrams from the American Embassy in Dhaka about violence, were clear. “All hands, don’t squeeze Yahya at this time,” he wrote, ticking option (3).
The crackdown led thousands of refugees to flee to India, prompting Indian support for the Muktibahini movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who won Pakistan’s December 1970 general election but was imprisoned. An Indo-Pakistani war followed, where the US even tried to threaten India by sending a naval fleet, but eventually Bangladesh was formed in December of the same year. India’s perspective was also shaped by the 20-year Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation signed in August 1971.
The Trump administration has most likely not delved deeply into the historical tensions that have come with the decision to use General Munir to deliver its proposal to Tehran or to send top US officials to Islamabad for talks. It is clear that some patterns from past US-Pakistan relations have been repeated, though that is where the similarities end, while other India-US and China-Russia ties have changed immeasurably. Much will now depend on how Iran’s leadership, which continues to counterattack despite suffering extensive damage from US-Israeli strikes, including the targeted killings of its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and National Security Adviser Ali Larijani, chooses to respond.
Published – 25 March 2026 11:28 IST
