All roads lead to Islamabad

The state of the world's health is not good. As a turbulent week draws to a close, there are genuine fears that the next few days could see a dangerous move towards escalation in the war on Iran.

Yet, hope survives.

And it is visible in Islamabad. If any breakthrough has to happen, it will happen right here. Pakistan is not just in the eye of the diplomatic storm – it is the eye of the storm.

On Saturday Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The official statement informed us that the conversation was a lengthy one – more than an hour. Diplomatic telephone calls do not last this long. There are talking points on both sides and leaders normally follow those points. To speak for an hour, or longer, is unusual. But these are unusual times.

So unusual, in fact, that events are being measured in historical terms. The oil crisis: never seen anything like it in modern time; the scale of the conflict: never seen anything like this since the second world war; Pakistan's mediation role at this level and with such stakes: never seen anything like this since…well, since ever.

So here we are – the Prime Minister, the Field Marshall and the Foreign Minister, all three busy negotiating world peace. If this were not so real, it could have been the plotline for the next Marvel superhero movie: Avengers in Pakistan! Reality is truly stranger than fiction.

But there's nothing strange about the important meeting in Islamabad on Monday. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Egypt will be in town to discuss prospects of peace at this crucial juncture in the conflict. Think about the magnitude of this moment – the largest, most devastating conflict since the end of the last world war is being managed or mediated, not by the sole superpower, or the emerging superpower, or the previous superpower, or from Europe or from the nations of BRICs, or Quad, or ASEAN, or the industrialised G-7 nations, or from the platform of the United Nations Security Council – from none of these, but from the duly and newly acknowledged middle powers emerging from the Global South.

The new reality is absolutely unreal.

But there's nothing unreal about the ability of Iran to keep hitting back hard after a month of fighting. It recently launched a devastating attack on the US base in Saudi Arabia in its fresh offensive, and the damage is pretty intense. Tehran's wrath is also falling on Israeli cities every day without a break. By all accounts, the damage that Iran has done in Israel is far more than what Israel acknowledges. This basically means there are slim chances of the fighting ending unless some diplomatic off-ramp is found. It also means that the United States cannot afford an escalation that may – and probably will – lead to much higher level of casualties. It also means that the world cannot afford oil prices going beyond 150 dollars and unleashing recessionary forces that will ravage economies across the globe. And, if there was anything worse that we had not mentioned, it also means no one, absolutely no one, can afford for the conflict to burn through its current zone and spread to other regions and other nations. History provides us many more cruel reminders than we care to remember about what happens when the flames of regional fighting are not doused in time.

Which brings us back to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's hour-long conversation with the Iranian president. The Iranians have made it amply clear they will not follow America's terms and timelines for ending the conflict. They and the whole world know well something that many might not want to acknowledge publicly – Iran now has the upper hand in negotiations, whenever and wherever they happen. This being the case, Iran may be tempted to buy time for better terms. Tempting as this might be, it also runs the risk of escalation spiralling out of control.

Pakistan knows this. The Americans want an off-ramp. Their 15-point proposal for Iran – the one that Steve Witkoff said we have delivered to them – is a maximalist one. No one in Washington would realistically expect the Iranians to accept those terms. But negotiations start with both sides playing for maximum. The real challenge now is convincing them to start their back-and-forth. The developments of the last few days suggest that Americans are more ready and willing for this than the Iranians.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's hour-long conversation would probably have focused on convincing the Iranian president to agree to a face-to-face with Americans in Islamabad. The foreign ministers meeting here on Monday will likely discuss similar prospects.

Such prospects, in fact, depend on guarantees that Iranians would want for talks to get underway. This makes total sense. The track record of Americans and Israelis is horrendous when it comes to using negotiations as a ploy to launch attacks. Nations led by Pakistan who are trying to forge peace from within the flames of war now face this herculean challenge of ensuring that Iran's genuine concerns are addressed.

It all depends on how accurately the American leader is reading the situation. The time for delusions is over. The time for peace is limited.