President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the conflict with Iran is “very close to over.” A high-ranking Pakistani delegation led by Field Marshal Asim Munir arrived in Tehran on the same day, bringing Washington’s latest ceasefire proposals.
Munir reportedly received a warm welcome in Tehran, then headed for Washington on Thursday with Iran’s reply. He was accompanied by Pakistan’s interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, and possibly by high-ranking Pakistani intelligence officers, although Islamabad did not name anyone other than Naqvi in his entourage.
The powerful Pakistani military chief, only the second officer to hold the title of “field marshal” in Pakistan’s history, has been working behind the scenes to facilitate diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran, leaving Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar to build support from Gulf Arab nations.
Sharif was in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and Doha, Qatar, on Thursday, while Dar is scheduled to join him for meetings with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey on Friday.
Munir has a good relationship with President Trump, who hailed him as a “great fighter,” a “very important guy,” an “exceptional human being,” and “my favorite field marshal” after they worked together on making a peace deal between Pakistan and India last year. Munir returned the praise, while India was noticeably less willing to give Trump public credit for brokering the ceasefire.
“The relationship Munir built with Trump has made Pakistan uniquely qualified to mediate peace talks between the United States and Iran. It is, indeed, the only country in the region that enjoys strong ties to Iran, the Gulf nations and the United States,” Lowy Institute research fellow Charles Lyons-Jones told Channel News Asia (CNA) on Thursday.
The Iranian foreign ministry confirmed that “several messages have been exchanged through Pakistan” following the collapse of U.S.-Iran talks in Islamabad last weekend.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt effusively praised Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts on Wednesday, and said “we feel good about the prospects of a deal.”
“The Pakistanis have been incredible mediators throughout this process, and we really appreciate their friendship and their efforts to bring this deal to a close. So they are the only mediator in this negotiation,” she said.
In an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News that aired on Wednesday morning, President Trump said the conflict with Iran is “very close to being over.”
“If I pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild that country. And we’re not finished. We’ll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly,” he said.
President Trump said on Thursday afternoon he “would go to Pakistan” to personally sign a satisfactory deal with Iran.
“Pakistan has been great. They’ve been so good,” he said. “If the deal is signed in Islamabad, I might go. The field marshal has been great. The prime minister has been really great in Pakistan, so I might go. They want me to go.”
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the U.S. and Iran were in active discussions to arrange another round of negotiations, but no date has been set.
“Who will come, how big the delegation will be, who will stay, and who will go is for the parties to decide,” said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi.
“As a mediator, it’s important for us to keep the talks confidential. We had the details and information of the talks entrusted to us by the negotiating parties,” he added.
Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, said from Islamabad on Thursday that the regime in Tehran would consider no other venue for negotiations.
“We will do talks in Pakistan and nowhere else, because we trust Pakistan,” he said.
