By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed cautious optimism on Thursday that Pakistani mediators could break the deadlock in negotiations to end the US-Iran war, as Pakistan’s powerful army chief prepared to travel to Tehran for high-level consultations and President Trump warned that the talks were teetering on the edge of collapse.
“I believe the Pakistanis will be travelling to Tehran today,” Rubio told reporters. “So hopefully that’ll advance this further.” He added: “There’s some good signs. I don’t want to be overly optimistic. So let’s see what happens over the next few days.”
The flurry of diplomatic activity came a day after Trump issued one of his starkest warnings yet about the fragility of the peace effort. “It’s right on the borderline, believe me,” the president told reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday. “If we don’t get the right answers, it goes very quickly. We’re all ready to go.” A deal, he said, could come “very quickly” or “in a few days” — but only if Tehran provided “100 percent good answers.”
Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief and the central figure in Islamabad’s mediation effort, was reported by Iran’s ISNA news agency to be heading to the Iranian capital for “talks and consultations” with Iranian authorities. Pakistani officials offered no official confirmation of his travel plans. Munir’s expected arrival would follow a second visit to Tehran in less than a week by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, who met separately on Thursday with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, meanwhile, is set to travel to Beijing on Saturday, where China has also been involved in parallel mediation efforts.
The intensified shuttle diplomacy underscored the urgency felt by all parties as a ceasefire that took effect April 8 — halting a war launched by the United States and Israel on February 28 — has failed, after nearly six weeks, to produce a durable settlement.
A war suspended, not ended
The war that erupted in late February reshaped the Middle East’s strategic landscape with startling speed. American and Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear and military facilities were answered by Tehran with ballistic missile and drone barrages against Gulf states, a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas ordinarily flows — and, ultimately, a ceasefire brokered in part through Pakistani mediation.
But the ceasefire has not reopened Hormuz. Iran has allowed only a trickle of vessels through the strait in recent weeks while imposing a toll system and demanding that ships obtain permission from its armed forces before transiting the waterway. The closure has rattled global commodity markets, and fears are mounting that the economic strain will intensify as pre-war oil stockpiles continue to be drawn down. The strait also carries roughly a third of global fertiliser shipments, raising the prospect of higher food prices and supply shortages if the impasse drags on much longer.
Iran’s government this week moved to formalise its wartime grip on the waterway. A newly established body called the Persian Gulf Strait Authority published a map on the social media platform X on Wednesday, delineating what it described as its “regulatory jurisdiction for the management” of the strait. The zone, it said, extends from Kuh-e Mubarak in Iran to the south of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates — explicitly encompassing Emirati waters.
The announcement drew an immediate and furious response from Abu Dhabi. “The regime is trying to establish a new reality born from a clear military defeat, but attempts to control the Strait of Hormuz or infringe on the UAE’s maritime sovereignty are nothing but pipe dreams,” Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the Emirati president, wrote on X. The UAE, whose Fujairah port hosts oil infrastructure built specifically to bypass Hormuz, has strongly opposed Iranian control of the strait and called for joint action to ensure freedom of navigation. Iran last week accused the UAE of playing an active role in the war — a claim Abu Dhabi has denied.
Rubio made clear that any Iranian-controlled toll or supervisory arrangement in the strait would be a dealbreaker for Washington. “A diplomatic solution would be unfeasible,” he said, if Tehran moved forward with such a system.
The anatomy of a stalemate
The negotiations have ground through a dispiriting cycle of proposals and counterproposals since the only direct face-to-face talks between American and Iranian officials — hosted by Pakistan in April and mediated in part by Munir himself — collapsed with Tehran accusing Washington of making “excessive demands.”
Iran submitted what it described as a refined version of its original 14-point proposal to the United States this week. The proposal, according to Nour News, an Iranian state-run outlet, encompasses Iranian control of Hormuz, reparations for war damage, the lifting of U.S. sanctions, the release of Iranian assets frozen abroad and the withdrawal of American troops from the region.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed late Wednesday that Tehran had “received US views and are reviewing them,” adding that messages had been exchanged “on several occasions” between the two governments through Pakistani intermediaries. Washington, for its part, has continued to insist on unrestricted maritime passage through Hormuz and has opposed any Iranian-managed tolling or supervisory mechanism, viewing it as incompatible with a lasting settlement.
Diplomats familiar with the talks described the negotiations as having entered a critical phase of text-based bargaining, focused on constructing what one characterised as a “narrowly managed stabilisation framework” — an interim arrangement centred on uranium custody, sanctions relief, maritime security and mutual guarantees against renewed strikes. The goal, these officials said, is to extend the ceasefire while creating space for a more structured follow-on process over the next 30 days. A collapse at this stage, several warned, would risk pushing the region back toward open military confrontation.
Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, signalled Wednesday that Tehran was girding for either outcome. “The enemy’s movements, both overt and clandestine, show that despite economic and political pressure, it has not abandoned its military objectives and is seeking to start a new war,” he said. Foreign Minister Araghchi echoed that posture. “Wherever it is necessary to fight, we will fight, and wherever it is necessary to negotiate, we will negotiate,” he said. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued its own warning, stating that if attacks on Iran were resumed, “the promised regional war will extend beyond the region this time.”
Pressure from all sides
Trump is operating under significant domestic political pressure to bring the conflict to a close as energy prices remain elevated and the disruption to global shipping continues to ripple through the American economy. Iran has been under a US naval blockade since mid-April, which Trump initiated to pressure Tehran into reopening Hormuz and accepting his terms. The US military’s Central Command said Wednesday that a ship was searched and redirected after being suspected of attempting to reach an Iranian port — at least the fifth such boarding since the blockade began.
Rubio, speaking as he prepared to travel to alliance talks in Sweden, renewed his criticism of NATO allies for declining to participate in the campaign against Iran. Trump, he said, was “not asking them to commit troops” or “to send their fighter jets in. But they refuse to do anything. We were very upset about that.”
Scott Lucas, a professor of US and international politics at University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute, said the dynamics of the negotiation had tilted in Iran’s favour. “Iran has the initiative because it formulated a 14-point proposal and, in doing so, shifted the focus to the Strait of Hormuz rather than the nuclear programme,” he said. “Iran was using its strongest form of leverage, which put Washington on the defensive. Now, the U.S. is scrambling to bring the nuclear file back to the forefront of negotiations.”
Lucas noted that issues once considered central to any US-Iran agreement — curbs on Iran’s ballistic missile program and Tehran’s relationships with groups such as Hezbollah — appear to have dropped off the table entirely. “The U.S. does not want to find itself in a worse position than it was on February 26, when it walked away from talks,” he said. “Eventually, I think a settlement will be reached, but we’re dealing with a chaotic and unpredictable president, so a return to war cannot be ruled out.”
Munir, who greeted both delegations at the April talks in Islamabad and was photographed in what witnesses described as a display of genuine warmth with Vice President JD Vance, has emerged as arguably the most important individual interlocutor in the peace effort. Whether his expected arrival in Tehran — and the diplomatic weight he carries — can unlock an agreement that has so far defied every attempt at resolution remained, as of Thursday evening, an open question.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
