Welcome to Foreign Policy‘s South Asia Brief.
Highlights this week: Pakistan is showing itself as a force mediator in the Iran warafter a brief ceasefire The conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan continues, and The new government of Nepal he is preparing to take power.
Pakistan Peace Broker?
Axios and Financial Times have reported that Pakistan is actively participating in mediation efforts between the US and Iran, with Pakistani leaders speaking separately to US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian earlier this week. Pakistan goes even hosting talks with senior US and Iranian officials in Islamabad in the coming days.
Pakistan may seem an unlikely mediator. It has a deep alliance with Iran’s rival Saudi Arabia, which has a mutual defense treaty last year. It has been brought down by his own conflict with Afghanistan. And Pakistan has no record of mediating the Middle East’s complex conflicts Chinafor example, which contributed to Iran’s reconciliation with Saudi Arabia in 2023.
But in fact, Pakistan’s mediating role makes sense: It is the rare country that has good relations with the United States and Iran and is involved at the highest levels of both governments.
Islamabad’s relationship with Tehran has come a long way since January 2024, when the two were involved in a short-lived conflict over cross-border militancy. In the past year, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif and the Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir they have held many meetings along with senior Iranian leaders in Iran and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Sharif and Munir have met with Trump as well, including a lunch hosted for Munir at the White House last June—right after the Pakistani official returned from a trip to Tehran before the brief Iran-Israel standoff. Later, Trump he told it media that Pakistanis “know Iran very well, better than most.”
A few weeks later, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to be praised Pakistan for its willingness to take a role as a mediator with Iran. Trump, who frequently to be praised Munir, may have even personally arranged for him to participate.
There are other factors working in Pakistan’s favor as a mediator. One is bureaucratic, as Islamabad represents Tehran’s diplomatic interests in Washington. Another involves personnel: Pakistan has closely guarded the family of a key player on the US side: the Middle East envoy. Steve Witkoff.
Pakistan has engaged Witkoff’s son Zach on cryptocurrency issues, including recently to sign a memorandum of understanding with one of Witkoff’s companies. Given the importance of personality in current White House policy, that’s nothing to sneeze at—and has likely strengthened Pakistan’s influence within the Trump administration.
More than other potential mediators, Pakistan has a strong incentive to end the conflict. It borders Iran to the east, making it more vulnerable to disintegration—the last thing it needs as it wages what it calls “open war” with the Taliban elsewhere. Pakistan is also heavily dependent on energy from the Middle East; may face soon great scarcity of liquefied natural gas.
Moreover, with Iran targeting Saudi Arabia with missiles and drones, Pakistan doesn’t want to be pressured into implementing its new mutual defense pact—it doesn’t want to be dragged into a war. This may all have contributed to Islamabad’s decision to declare itself as a mediator, instead of waiting for a formal request from the warring parties.
These efforts may fall short—whether because of Trump’s unpredictability, Pakistan’s lack of formal relations with Israel, or Iran’s refusal to talk face-to-face with American negotiators due to mistrust.
Still, Pakistan’s efforts to reach this point speak to the growing diplomatic influence it enjoys in the Middle East. That is a huge boon to Pakistan’s strategic interests, given its important energy imports from the region, several million Pakistani expatriates living there, and that the Middle East is home to the country’s closest allies and donors.
More broadly, Pakistan’s central mediating role promotes a contradict each other which has played for months: the country enjoys being extended geopolitical time sun, even if it continues to suffer from home surfing challenges.
What we’re after
South Asia is feeling hot. The de-escalation of the Iran war cannot come soon enough for South Asia as it faces severe energy shortages and other dire economic consequences. But it also faces another uncomfortable challenge, given its proximity to the conflict zone: War is creeping closer to the region, and countries must do more to distance themselves from it.
In early March, a U.S. submarine it sank an Iranian ship from Sri Lanka that participated in a joint naval exercise in India. Last week, Sri Lanka he said it had rejected a US request earlier that month to land two warplanes at a civilian airport. Sergio Gor, the US ambassador to India, may have discussed the war during the a five-day visit to Sri Lanka and the Maldives which ended on Tuesday.
Moreover, last Friday, US officials he said Iran fired missiles at Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean that hosts a joint US-UK military base. (Tehran he denies This.) Most of the states of South Asia, like most of the southern part of the world, are not united and avoid being involved in the conflicts of other countries. But the war in Iran is too close for comfort.
The conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan continues again. On Tuesday, the Taliban regime he said that Pakistan launched drone strikes in northern Afghanistan just after the conclusion of a brief agreement between the two countries. Afghan media is mentioned Local sources said the Pakistani airstrikes hit a Taliban military base. Taliban rejected the claim, arguing that they removed the drones.
Pakistan rejected that it had engaged in strikes that violated the ceasefire for a while, but the resumption of hostilities is not surprising. Pakistani forces and the Taliban have been fighting for weeks, and neither side described the ceasefire – in observance of Eid al-Fitr – as an end.
However, the fact that the two sides did not use the opportunity to seek a longer ceasefire speaks to the challenges of ending the conflict—especially when Iran’s war has engulfed Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which oversaw the previous rounds of Afghanistan-Pakistan talks.
An American citizen is freed in Afghanistan. Dennis Coyle, an American held captive by the Taliban since January 2025, was released this week. According to the Coyle familyhe was held in near solitary confinement and was never charged with a crime. Coyle, a 64-year-old academic researcher, worked in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years before his detention.
Tuesday, Rubio he announced that Coyle was on his way home and thanked Qatar and the United Arab Emirates for their efforts to free him. Timing is important, coming after the Trump administration appointed Afghanistan as a state sponsor of wrongful detention—and senior US officials warning the Taliban of the potential costs of not releasing the remaining American hostages.
This marked a sudden shift for the Trump administration, which previously used quiet diplomacy with the Taliban to press for the release of US citizens, resulting in at least two of them being. free last year. It seems that the administration was getting frustrated; the day the name was announced, Rubio he said that “the despicable tactics of the Taliban need to stop.”
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Under the Radar
Nepal will swear in South Asia’s newest government on Friday. Balendra Shah, a 35-year-old former mayor of Kathmandu, will take over as the country’s prime minister. In a rare situation for Nepal, the government will be led by a party other than the Nepali Parliament and the country’s two largest left-wing parties.
The three traditional parties have dominated politics since the end of Nepal’s monarchy in 2008. Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) ran its election campaign on an anti-corruption platform, building on the central theme that drove the mass protests that ousted the previous government last September.
RSP has already indicated that it plans to do things differently. party he announced that his inauguration ceremony will be limited, with a small guest list that does not include any foreign dignitaries. The celebration of indifference is likely to play well with the public, especially the youth who led last year’s protests, which have pushed for a cleaner and more efficient government.
Shah has great public authority to deliver the results: His party enjoyed a landslide victory in the election, winning a two-thirds majority in parliament.
