How Pakistan Is Using the Iran War to Reinvent Itself

NEWYORKER-June4th2026

On New Year’s Day of 2018, Donald Trump, like previous American Presidents, was fed up with Pakistan. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,” Trump tweeted, “and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” Three days later, the U.S. cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Islamabad.

In Trump’s second term, the relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan has shifted once again: today, Islamabad is helping Trump find a way out of a self-made crisis with Iran—a war that has convulsed the global economy and weakened the Republican Party going into the midterm elections. As the primary mediator between Washington and Tehran, Pakistan has earned newfound credibility as a peace broker and a security partner, accomplishing what no other country or international body has been able to do: hosting the first high-level, face-to-face meetings between Iran and the U.S. in more than a decade.

Pakistan was in desperate need of a reputational rehabilitation. The country, which is largely run by its military, is wrestling with political and economic instability, marked by increasing government repression, terrorism, domestic insurgencies, and huge debts. The same military steering the diplomatic efforts between the U.S. and Iran led the campaign for the imprisonment of the nation’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan—a move that has been widely condemned by the United Nations and international human-rights bodies. Pakistan is also in the middle of its own war with the Taliban in Afghanistan—a group that Islamabad once cultivated and supported—while tensions with India, its main regional enemy, remain high. “Even if the talks were to collapse, and there was not a deal, Pakistan will still be a winner,” Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, told me. “It’s a remarkable turnaround, because it does appear to have evolved from something close to a pariah to a peacemaker.”

Pakistan’s emergence as a mediator of the U.S.-Iran war illustrates how diplomacy has become more personal and transactional under Trump. By catering to his ego, international leaders can persuade Washington to forget—or at least to ignore—past tensions. Orchestrating this new détente for Pakistan is Field Marshal Asim Munir, the country’s Army chief and its most powerful figure, who has forged close ties with Trump. “The Pakistanis, like others, have figured out how the game is played with Trump, and they have played it extremely well,” Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, told me. “Do things he likes, flatter him shamelessly, present an image he likes. It helps if you’re a strongman wearing a uniform. Pakistan had the cards, and they just played them very well in terms of timing and substance.