ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office on Thursday issued a sharp denial of reports that Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar had passed sensitive intelligence to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Iran’s nuclear program, calling the claims fabricated and potentially designed to sabotage fragile diplomatic efforts across a region already bristling with tensions.
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Gulf hostilities flare as Trump claims Iran nuclear pledge; Rubio tells Congress offensive campaign is finished
ISLAMABAD: Iranian missiles and drones struck Kuwait’s international airport Wednesday, killing at least one person and injuring dozens, as the United States carried out fresh strikes near the Strait of Hormuz and President Trump claimed, in a morning podcast interview, that Iran had already agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program — an assertion Tehran’s government flatly contradicted.
Pakistan sets June 10 budget date as PM Sharif courts business elite on tax, exports
ISLAMABAD: The government has settled on June 10 to present its federal budget for fiscal year 2026-27, locking in the date after coalition consultations produced a rare show of cross-party consensus on spending priorities — even as the administration navigates the twin pressures of IMF compliance and the resistance of provinces unwilling to subordinate their development ambitions to national fiscal targets.
US and Iran trade fresh strikes as ceasefire talks founder
ISLAMABAD: American warplanes fired a Hellfire missile into the engine room of an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, the sixth vessel disabled since Washington imposed a naval blockade on Iran in April, touching off a cascade of retaliatory strikes and counter-strikes that laid bare the fragility of a ceasefire that has never truly held.
As US-Iran talks teeter, Netanyahu defies pressure to stand down in Lebanon — and eight more die
ISLAMABAD: Israeli drone strikes killed eight people in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, hours after President Trump declared that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop fighting — an announcement undercut almost immediately by renewed bloodshed and a torrent of conflicting statements from governments on both sides of the conflict.
Trump erupts at Netanyahu in profanity-laced call, halts Beirut strike plans as Lebanon crisis threatens Iran deal
ISLAMABAD: US President Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “crazy,” told him he would be in jail without his protection, and shouted profanities at him during a phone call on Monday, media outlet Axios and others reported, quoting two US officials and a third source briefed on the conversation — a searing confrontation that halted a planned Israeli military assault on Beirut and exposed deepening fractures between two leaders who have long presented their alliance as unshakable.
Pakistan steps up diplomacy as Iran freezes talks with US, straining fragile ceasefire
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign minister placed an urgent telephone call to his Iranian counterpart on Monday, urging Tehran to preserve a fragile regional ceasefire even as Iran announced it was halting indirect negotiations with the United States — a move that raised the specter of a broader collapse in the diplomatic architecture that has kept a wider Middle Eastern war at bay since April.
Trump seeks tougher terms on Iran’s uranium stockpile, sending negotiators back to table
ISLAMABAD: US President Donald Trump has sent his negotiators back to the table with Iran after rejecting the draft terms of a potential ceasefire deal, demanding stronger language on the disposal of Tehran’s enriched uranium stockpile and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — in a move that risks prolonging one of the most dangerous standoffs the Middle East has seen in years.
Hegseth hails Pakistan as a ‘true friend,’ crediting Islamabad’s hand in Iran talks
ISLAMABAD: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Saturday that an unlikely and deepening partnership has taken hold between the United States and Pakistan, crediting Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir with helping steer Washington and Tehran toward a fragile but still-tenuous peace.
Trump convenes Situation Room meeting on Iran as Tehran disputes terms of any agreement
ISLAMABAD: US President Trump convened an emergency meeting in the White House Situation Room on Friday to weigh what he described as a sweeping agreement with Iran — one that would demand Tehran permanently renounce nuclear weapons, reopen the Strait of Hormuz to unrestricted shipping, and allow American forces to unearth and destroy the Islamic Republic’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.