Analysis notes army chief’s backchannel diplomacy has left Modi sidelined as Pakistan brokers US-Iran communication
PM Shehbaz, Field Marshal Munir and US President Donald Trump at the White House Photo: PMO X account
When Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar recently called Pakistan a fixer for acting as a messenger between the United States and Iran, the insult betrayed a profound sense of marginalisation – and was, in a sense, an involuntary acknowledgment of reality.
An analysis published in Foreign Policy magazine argued that in US President Donald Trump’s eyes, being a fixer is not a mark of shame but a badge of utility.
Trump has found in Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir “exactly the sort of interlocutor that he likes – a hard-power operator with direct access to the White House and a willingness to sell himself as useful.”
This, according to the article, “has left Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an awkward position, relegated to receiving a single phone call from Trump about the crisis in the Middle East” – with Elon Musk listening in on the line.
Read: Pakistan emerges where India could not
Pakistan, meanwhile, has been anything but idle. Islamabad cast itself as a neutral mediator between Washington and Tehran, hosting talks on March 29 with Egypt, Turkiye, and Saudi Arabia, where the four countries formed a committee to support a ceasefire and secured a deal with Iran to allow Pakistani ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar then rushed to Beijing for a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, after which the two countries released a five-part peace plan. Given the lack of concrete outcomes so far, Foreign policy notes, Pakistan is “framing this incipient process as a practical step to widen the communication channel between the two sides.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Munir “maintained direct and separate backchannels to relay sensitive messages between Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, while communicating with other global leaders.”
The article draws a parallel to a pivotal moment in history: “Pakistan’s role as a bridge between the United States and Iran mirrors its facilitation of the US opening to China in 1971,” when Islamabad leveraged its geography, military channels, and status as an intermediary to help secure Henry Kissinger’s secret trip to Beijing – a move that altered the course of Cold War geopolitics.
This “multidirectional diplomacy,” the piece states, suggests Islamabad is trying to reprise that role, with the destination today being not China but a US-Iran rapprochement.
It adds that the recent flurry of activity has “elevated Pakistan from a so-called basketcase country to a state recognised for its efforts to secure regional peace” – a shift after years of Islamabad being sidelined by previous American presidents.
Pakistan has not only deepened its ties with China but formalised a new strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia, while finding common ground with Iran on action against Baloch separatists.
The catalyst for this shift, Foreign Policy argues, was the brief military conflict between Pakistan and India in May 2025, saying, “Islamabad managed to turn the crisis into leverage by allowing Trump to claim credit for a ceasefire and nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize,” while a sullen Modi insisted the ceasefire decision was strictly his own.
That exchange, it says, “marked the beginning of a broader strategic reversal in which Pakistan stopped looking isolated and India started looking exposed.”
Read More: Iran’s war chaos slows talks, Pakistan warns
The consequences for India have compounded since. At the start of the Iran war, Modi chose to back Israel – and by extension the United States – positioning New Delhi out of a role as a credible arbiter. India has since been reduced to making requests by phone to Tehran to allow ships carrying cooking gas to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, while Pakistan is treated as a credible conduit in the very region where India once hoped to expand its equities.
“Pakistan has outperformed India by manufacturing diplomatic relevance despite its own internal problems and risks of failure as an interlocutor, starting with overpromising and underdelivering,” it states. This moment, it adds, “underscores New Delhi’s poor standing in its extended neighbourhood,” as “India remains tethered to the domestic political narrative of aspiring to global leadership, it is being bypassed in the real corridors of power.”
The emergence of a middle-power bloc – Pakistan, Egypt, Turkiye, and Saudi Arabia – packing “three of the Middle East’s biggest armies, nuclear weapons, and financial heft,” represents a further challenge to Indian interests. For India, which has always preferred bilateral engagements, Foreign Policy warns, “the rise of such a group worryingly suggests a future where actors who are not aligned with New Delhi’s vision shape the regional order.”
These challenges also expose a harder truth about the US-India relationship, which it argues has “always been more about shared anxieties regarding China than about shared values or deep-seated trust.” If Army Chief Munir can deliver a deal with Iran or provide a stable platform for US interests in South Asia, Trump will not hesitate to reward him at Modi’s expense, it claims.
Yet the article is equally candid about the risks Pakistan carries. Its mediation is “built on a brittle foundation,” and its “diplomatic rise is tied disproportionately to one man, and to a White House that rewards theatre and tactical usefulness.”
“Pakistan is not being embraced because its institutions are strong or its economy is resilient; it is simply available,” it adds. Its economy remains fragile, “its military establishment still dominates foreign policy in ways that limit civilian officials’ capacity to negotiate quickly, and its political system is hardly stable enough to support a long-term strategic pivot.”
Any mediating role between hostile powers, Foreign Policy cautions, exposes Pakistan to “retaliation, suspicion, and the possibility of being blamed by one side for the failure of talks or by the other for extracting too much mileage from access.” Talks will have to be indirect, with Pakistani officials shuttling between delegations.
Also Read: US VP Vance spoke to Pakistani intermediaries about Iran conflict as recently as Tuesday: source
“The very position that creates visibility will also make Pakistan the bearer of bad news when talks collapse – and that remains a distinct possibility,” the analysis reads. In the court of a transactional leader like Trump, it warns, “the distance between a favoured intermediary and a discarded asset is remarkably short.”
Internal vulnerabilities, however, “do not diminish the fact that Pakistan has successfully broken the diplomatic quarantine that Modi worked so hard to impose.”
For over a decade, Modi’s strategy was straightforward: globalise India’s economy, deepen partnerships with the West, and dominate the narrative of a responsible rising power, so that “Pakistan would be pushed to the margins.” The current situation, the piece argues, shows how that foreign policy prioritised domestic narratives over the harsh realities of international power dynamics.
“The real embarrassment for India is not that Pakistan has become more active. It is that [Army Chief] Munir is being welcomed in capitals where Modi once expected to be consulted, if not deferred to,” Foreign Police states. Modi, it adds, “must sit with an uncomfortable realisation: Pakistan is still there, still annoying, still unstable, and yet also suddenly more useful to the powers that matter in this moment.”
“India cannot afford to disregard this jolt at a time of great geopolitical change,” it concludes – and for Modi, it should be a wake-up call to rethink the fundamentals of his foreign policy, not an excuse for his minister to resort to pejoratives against Pakistan.
