By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, arrived in Tehran on Tuesday on his fifth visit since April’s ceasefire, with Iran warning that a return to fighting with the United States is a real possibility.
Iranian state television said Field Marshal Munir had landed “along with a delegation of officials”. The state news agency IRNA reported that Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi was travelling with him, and that the army chief was due to meet Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, first.
Islamabad did not immediately confirm the visit. A Pakistani official had earlier told Reuters that Field Marshal Munir was due to travel.
Esmaeil Baqaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said the talks would touch on the negotiations but were “mainly focused on bilateral relations and strengthening interactions and cooperation”. He was blunt about the risk of renewed war. The US has not struck Iran since September, but Baqaei told reporters: “We live with this possibility day and night.”
The trip follows the collapse of a Pakistani-brokered agreement in June. The two sides remain deadlocked over the future of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s oil and gas normally passes, and over Iran’s nuclear programme. Washington and Tehran have been at war since 28 February, when the US and Israel began striking Iran.
The visit came a day after the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, held talks in Tehran. It was his first trip there since the war began. He met Araghchi and the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and discussions covered the war, Hormuz and efforts to end the fighting. At a joint press conference on Monday, Mr Araghchi blamed Washington for insecurity in the strait, which Iran has tried to blockade during the war.
Seyed Mojtaba Jalazadeh, a Tehran-based foreign policy analyst, told Al Jazeera the timing suggested Iran wanted to keep several diplomatic channels open rather than rely on one mediator.
Qatar has also become a significant conduit in recent weeks, passing proposals between the two sides. Qatar has said communication between Tehran and Washington has not stopped. Andreas Krieg, of King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that Qatar did much of the detailed negotiating, while Pakistan offered “political access”, particularly through Field Marshal Munir.
Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing Iranian officials, that Tehran had been deliberately prolonging the talks to weaken Donald Trump politically before the midterm elections, while preparing for the possibility of renewed US and Israeli attacks.
Araghchi said on Sunday that Iran’s proposal remained on the table, with messages still passing through mediators. Under the plan, Iran would reopen the strait on the sixth day if the US lifted its naval blockade of Iranian ports, released frozen assets and waived sanctions on Iranian oil sales. Negotiations would begin on the seventh day.
Trump rejected the offer on 26 September. Since then, according to Al Jazeera, the US has sent an additional aircraft carrier to the region, expected to arrive by late November.
The Islamabad memorandum of understanding signed in June set out 14 points. The US was to lift its blockade within 30 days and the strait was to reopen. About $24bn in frozen Iranian assets was to be released in phases over 60 days of further talks, including on the nuclear programme. That window closed in mid-August without an extension. Iran says Washington failed to meet its commitments, while the US blockade remains in place.
Pakistan’s foreign office continues to point to the deal. Its spokesman, Sajjad Haider Khan, said on 9 October that the memorandum was “already in place”.
Analysts are split on whether it can still serve as a basis for talks. Krieg called it “politically alive” but “operationally dead”.
Islamabad’s role as go-between is complicated by its security commitments to Saudi Arabia. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August, Pakistan’s second pact with Riyadh after a mutual defence agreement signed in September 2025. At an emergency meeting in Riyadh on 5 October, the three agreed to speed up the deployment of forces.
Within days, Houthi missiles and drones from Yemen hit Riyadh’s King Khalid international airport more than once, along with targets in Abha, Yanbu and Shaybah. The Houthis are aligned with Iran.
Lt-Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the Pakistani military spokesman, told Independent Arabia on 18 October that “the security of the Harmain Sharifain is paramount”, referring to the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. He declined to give operational details.
On 8 October, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the US would not attack Iran before the midterm elections on 3 November, adding that talks with Tehran were productive. Ten days later he endorsed Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ahead of Israel’s election on 27 October, saying that if Israel had a different leader “America will have to do this work ourselves”.
Axios reported that the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, met Netanyahu on Monday during an unannounced visit to Ovda airbase in southern Israel. It said the two discussed possibly resuming major combat operations against Iran.
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