Ahead of Lindsey Graham’s funeral in Washington, President Donald Trump offered what may prove to be the late U.S. senator’s most memorable epitaph. Graham, Trump quipped, had “never seen a war that he didn’t like.” Indeed, Graham’s own recently leaked remarks leave little doubt that he had far greater admiration for wartime leaders than for peacemakers: In May 2026, Graham termed “problematic” the role of Pakistan as a mediator in America’s war with Iran.
As the ceasefire appeared to unravel and conflict flares up now and again between Iran and the U.S., the Gulf news outlet Al-Jazeera featured a headline asking, “Can Pakistan keep US-Iran diplomacy alive as mistrust deepens?” But ending wars is a rather more difficult task than celebrating those who wage them. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir’s diplomatic intervention deserves to be understood through the realities of conflict resolution, where mediators are often blamed when peace proves more elusive than expected.
The detractors of the Memorandum of Understanding brokered by Pakistan fail to understand the dynamics of conflict management. An enduring ceasefire is all about time: It needs to occur at the right time, and the process itself takes time. Pakistan learned how to use time to its advantage, as well as its geographic location between China and Iran. Combined with its longtime alliance with the U.S., Pakistan was and remains well positioned, literally, to open dialogue for all three of these countries.
The Third-Party Mediator
On the eve of World War I, nations lacked an international organization to mediate tensions between the European states after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. The League of Nations attempted to do this but lacked both “carrots and sticks,” or incentives and punishments, to effectively broker peace.
Pakistan learned how to use time to its advantage, as well as its geographic location between China and Iran. Combined with its longtime alliance with the U.S., Pakistan was and remains well positioned, literally, to open dialogue for all three of these countries.
After the Second World War and during the Cold War, international organizations like the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Organization of African Unity intervened as third-party mediators. At other times, the U.S., as a superpower during the Cold War, could use carrots and sticks—for example, to bring Egypt and Israel to a peace deal in 1979 by offering massive financial incentives in the Camp David Accords that are still paid out to both states. As Asfandyar Mir, Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center’s South Asia Program, describes this postwar era, “the attributes that made countries geopolitically influential were settled: they included major-power status, economic weight, liberal normative credentials, and convening authority over other major states.”
In the American unipolar moment after the collapse of the USSR, Washington was still able to serve the role of lead mediator. For instance, President Bill Clinton mediated the 1999 Kargil War between Pakistan and India, pressing Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to withdraw Pakistani forces from across the contested Line of Control. While its role in South Asia grew complicated throughout the War on Terror and amid increasing great power competition in the region, the U.S. continues to serve as a mediator in South Asian conflicts, as it reportedly did in the May 2025 conflict.
Thus, what took the world by surprise in the spring of 2026 was that Pakistan, a middle power, was able to return the favor when it intervened between the U.S., a superpower, and Iran, a middle power. But while Pakistan has not historically possessed such carrots and sticks, it has been able to serve in a third-party mediation role in the past. Most notably, it facilitated then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China in 1971, the first step in the normalization of relations between Washington and Beijing later that decade.
Pakistan Amid the U.S.-Iran War
In the case of the 2026 U.S.-Iran war, Pakistan once again found itself at the center of a unique web of relationships. Pakistan’s relations with the U.S. turned dramatically after the May 2025 conflict. Islamabad nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize and Trump hosted Field Marshal Munir at the White House in June 2025, consulting with Pakistan’s military leader on the Israel-Iran war then underway. Iran and Pakistan, once rivals over Afghanistan in the 2000s, also had had a rapprochement. Pakistan, which shares a 900-kilometer border with Iran, wanted to prevent its neighbor’s collapse, which would send refugees over the border and exacerbate Baloch militancy.
Pakistan was able to pull off both mediations in 1971 and 2026 because of what can be termed “geo-positional capital.” In 1971, it was the sole trusted channel between two governments that had no relations. In 2026, Pakistan’s leverage included geography, as the only state bordering Iran with a direct line to Trump; and credibility in Iran, from having condemned the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and being the only Muslim-majority military and nuclear power in West Asia that opposes Israel. Pakistan could neither pay nor punish either party, but as a third-party mediator, it had the assets of access, credibility, and most importantly, timing. Indeed, as Mir writes, “[D]uring the most dangerous Middle East crisis in a generation, Pakistan did what China, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, and other geopolitical heavyweights could not.”
Pakistan’s intervention followed a pattern where Qatar mediated between Israel and a violent non-state actor, Hamas. Both Qatar and Pakistan have learned that it is an unenviable position: When the process does not make progress, one or both parties will blame the mediator. Indeed, besides the late Senator Graham, blame has been pointed at Pakistan from India and Israel. However, blame is often cast on these states when the problem is not the mediator, but the process itself.
When Does Mediation Succeed
A successful third-party intervention needs to occur at the most opportune time. Pakistan intervened in an inter-state conflict at a point when it reached a “mutually hurting stalemate,” the analytical concept first articulated by conflict resolution scholar William Zartmann. A “mutually hurting stalemate” is a situation in which neither party thinks it can win a given conflict without incurring excessive loss, and both are suffering from a continuation of fighting. The conflict at this point has entered a period of “ripeness,” the moment for third-party mediation.
Both Iran and the U.S. appeared to have reached a mutually hurting stalemate, inflicting enough pain on both sides. The U.S., along with Israel, had eliminated Iran’s leadership as well as its military and energy infrastructure. Iran, to America’s surprise, mounted a regional retaliation, hitting Israel and targets in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, closing the Straits of Hormuz, and sending the price of oil, gas, and other critical supplies upwards. It was at this point that President Trump issued an ultimatum on April 7 to the Iranian government to open the Strait or face the destruction of “a whole civilization.”
Disaster was averted when Field Marshal Munir placed a phone call that pressed Trump and Iran’s leadership to stop the war. Washington and Tehran announced a ceasefire, leading to U.S. Vice President JD Vance sitting across from Iranian negotiators in Islamabad for more than 20 hours. It was the highest-level direct contact between the two countries since the 1979 revolution. For Islamabad, it was a diplomatic coup on par with facilitating Kissinger’s visit to China.
[…] the most valuable ammunition both the U.S. and Iran may be depleting is their patience with the process. However, if violence escalates even further, the table both sides will return to when hurt is in Islamabad.
Pakistan should not be blamed for what the scholar Herbert Kelman calls the “social-psychological” approach to conflict management. The conflicting parties’ perceptions, attitudes, values, and behavior can be changed through consultative meetings, problem-solving workshops, or conferences. This approach, which began in 2013 when Obama-era officials visited Oman to establish dialogue with Iran, was successful during the negotiations leading up to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 because it created a consortium of third parties to the “Iran deal,” including the EU. Going forward, a similar arrangement could be instituted, which would ideally include Oman and Qatar, as both states represent the GCC, as well as Iran’s neighbor Iraq.
In the same recent Al-Jazeera article, Grace Wermenbol, a former U.S. national security official and senior visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, appears to reflect Kelman’s approach, arguing that “Persistent recurring conflict has eroded the trust necessary [between the U.S. and Iran] for a longer-term ceasefire.” Mehran Kamrava, a professor of at Georgetown University in Qatar, also reiterates that the “intractability” of the conflict has more to do with U.S. and Iranian aims for the Strait of Hormuz than with “any failure of mediation” on Pakistan’s part.
Second, the perception of mutual hurt can change over time. At a certain point, the renewed conflict in the Gulf is because one side thinks it can resume the conflict because the other party is more vulnerable. Iran’s security establishment, the Revolutionary Guard, which has de facto control of the country, is gauging that the Trump administration feels the “hurt” more as the midterm elections loom, or by opening up a front on the Red Sea, leveraging economic warfare against a foe that has more conventional military strength. Iran might also use the summer months to its advantage, believing that the U.S. might be reluctant to deploy ground forces on Iranian soil at a time of year when islands in the Gulf have reached up to 70°C (150°F) over the last two years.
But the role of time in conflict is one of the most substantial independent variables that no international organization or nation, whether a superpower or middle power, can control. For now, the U.S. and Iran have argued the terms of the MoU were suspended, each side accusing the other of violating the agreement first. Yet neither side has abandoned the process, even as they return to the negotiating table via military escalation from Washington and defiance from Tehran.
These are the dynamics that Pakistan has to manage, demonstrating that the most valuable ammunition both the U.S. and Iran may be depleting is their patience with the process. However, if violence escalates even further, the table both sides will return to when hurt is in Islamabad. The third-party mediator’s task is not to manufacture ripeness, then, but to be present when it arrives.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of South Asian Voices, the Stimson Center, or our supporters.
Also Read: The Islamabad Channel: Mediation and Elite Survival
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Image 1: Shehbaz Sharif on X
Image 2: Shehbaz Sharif on X
