Reality check: India can downplay Pakistan’s role in US-Iran ceasefire, but can’t deny it |
Israel has bombed Lebanon despite a temporary ceasefire between the US and Iran, putting a fragile Pakistan-brokered truce in West Asia at risk. After the no-holds-barred Israeli bombing that killed over 100 people, Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz once more.
If the ceasefire holds, talks may be held in Islamabad on April 10. The resultant peace agreement – if there is one – will be called the Islamabad Accord.
A team of US negotiators headed by Vice President JD Vance, including Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, will reportedly travel to the Pakistani capital for talks with Iranian officials, who will be led by Foreign Minister Syed Abbas Araghchi.
Many versions are circulating about how the truce came about. Though Trump seemed to have accepted all of Iran’s 10-point list of demands, a report in the Financial Times cast Pakistan as a US proxy.
Other reports spoke of Pakistan as a proxy of China.
A report in The Guardian brought it all together — Trump’s desperation for a ceasefire, the need to involve China as a “guarantor”, and Pakistan’s part in bringing everyone on board. In all versions, Pakistan's Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif are reported to have played pivotal roles. They are also now frantically trying to save the ceasefire.
Pakistan's centrality to the negotiated two-week truce has thrust the country under a flattering spotlight, quite different from its other image as the address of most internationally-sanctioned terrorist entities.
All this was only a year after Operation Sindoor, India's response to the terrorist atrocity at Pahalgam. Delhi said then it had established a “new normal” in dealing with cross-border terrorism through its military response, which escalated from the previous ones after the Uri attack in 2016 and the Pulwama bombing in 2019. Henceforth, India said, every act of terror on its territory would be considered an act of war by Pakistan.
“Terrorists will not be treated as proxies,” Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar said in Parliament. After the ceasefire, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that the operation........