Much has happened since the Islamabad talks last weekend ended on uncertain note – the US has started blockading the Strait of Hormuz , and Iran has upped the ante threatening that it will not allow that to happen , and the rest of the world is on edge wondering what will happen now as the fragile ceasefire has come under strain . All this sits in contrast to hopes and promises that the talks held before they began in Islamabad on April 11 and concluded without any concrete results in sight.
The most disturbing fact is that the world is now in more precarious situation than it was during the ix-week war in West Asia as it had been hoping that the war would end .The war as given a pause on April 8, after the US and Iran agreed to look for peace during the two-week ceasefire .That was a great relief for the world. Its fingers were crossed .
While the world is discussing the possible outcome of the resumption of high-tensions, Pakistan is busy in portraying 21-hour e US-Iran talks in Islamabad as an opening and summing it up in euphemistic terms , neither a “ breakthrough nor a breakdown “ moment . It is also counting some of the positives , essentially based on t its much-vaunted claim that at least the two sides met at the highest level after a gap of 47 years since the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979 . The meeting, in itself is a big diplomatic triumph , that’s what Pakistan thinks . It has been pushed to this assumption that it is doing a great job by some of the leaders , who saw the face to face talk as a straw in the wind. The leaders had to do so because the war in the Middle East had inflicted huge economic damage to them in terms of oil prices , markets and disruption in energy supplies .
In international relations , such nudging is considered as an imperative to help the parties , and their host to pull some broad agreement . These were high-stake talks and the world had its own stakes in them .Pakistan, however, took these compliments as an its standing as a global player in making peace between the two sides. There is no premium on illusions ..
Pakistan’s argument is simple that the distrust of nearly five decades could not have disappeared in few hours, because issues had piled up and become complicated because of the war between America -Israel and Iran.
There also is no doubt that the diplomacy is not one-day or couple -of- days event , but a process which takes time . And, it is an admitted fact that no one wanted the talks to hit a stonewall, because all the countries wanted this war- time situation to end, because all of them were suffering from the consequences of the conflict . It was immaterial for them where the talks were held . It so happened that talks were held in Pakistani capital Islamabad .
The most pressing question before the world is what happens to the two-week ceasefire which has run half of its course by now . Should Pakistan share the responsibility if the war resumes . The answer to this question lies that ahead of the talks on April 11 talks , Islamabad was projecting itself as a peace maker who had brought the two warring sides to the negotiating table at a moment when the things were spiraling out of hands with global consequences , therefore if it claimed credit for hosting and facilitating talks , it cannot escape the responsibility for what happened on April 12 when the talks were left in lurch, most of the world concluding that these were a ‘failure. It has to save its own position , and if it is unable to do so , it will have to ponder where things went wrong .
A plausible argument , advanced by many former diplomats in Pakistan, is that it was for the two warring sides to resolve the issues, and Pakistan did a grand job. By bringing the two at a negotiation table . This sounds true to some extent because it was for US Vice President J D Vance led delegation and Iranian delegation led by Parliament speaker. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf to hammer out their differences , and Pakistan could not have played much of the role in their conversations that lasted for 20 hours or so. It begets a question whether Pakistan was unaware of its diplomatic weaknesses before the talks began or before Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif offered to host the talks and sent missives to the US and Iran. This also adds up to another question , if that was the case, it should not have projected itself as a peace maker or global leader in diplomacy with the capacity to bring about breakthrough. As some Pakistani commentators too have observed that they were expecting broad understanding as an outcome of talks .
It was hardly any secret that there were three major sticking points from the very beginning – first, of course , was a demand on Iran not to have a nuclear weapon and surrender its enriched uranium , two others were added later as the war raged on – (a) keeping the Strait of Harmuz , the narrow waterways through which the 20 per cent of energy supplies of the world pass through and , ( b) Iran to put a cap on its missile programmes.
Iran, on the other hand, was demanding that the war must end permanently with a guarantee that Iran would not be attacked again . Tehran delegation had put forward many other suggestions , some of which J D Vance said were accommodated , others were not . He virtually declared talks chapter closed with the words : “ We go back to the United States having not come to an agreement , We’ve made it very clear what our redlines are, hat we are willing to accommodate them on and what things we are not willing to accommodate them on . We’ve made that as clear as we possibly could , and they’ve chosen not to accept our terms.”
That was an end . And now that end has triggered greater and larger tensions in the world. Pakistan , however, refuses to come out of its make-believe world .
(The author is international affairs expert)
