The BRICS TimesIran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrapped up his Islamabad visit on Saturday evening after hours of top-level meetings. He handed over a list of conditions to Pakistani leaders meant for Washington and Tel Aviv. He then flew to Oman and Russia, leaving Pakistan’s grand diplomatic ambitions completely shattered. The highly anticipated second round of US-Iran talks never happened on Pakistani soil.
Iran’s top diplomat leaves Islamabad with a list of demands
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi led his delegation out of Islamabad on Saturday evening. The visit wrapped up after a full day of high-level meetings with Pakistan’s top leadership. Pakistan had aggressively positioned itself as the venue for a second round of US-Iran peace negotiations. That ambition collapsed spectacularly as Araghchi departed without sitting across from any American envoy.Before leaving, the Iranian side handed Pakistani leaders an “official list of demands” earmarked for the United States and Israel. Tehran made clear these conditions must be addressed to reach a comprehensive resolution to the ongoing West Asia conflict. Araghchi then headed to Oman and Russia for further diplomatic engagement, skipping any additional talks on Pakistani soil.
Pakistan’s full power structure gathered but achieved little
In a striking show of institutional urgency, Pakistan’s civil and military leadership assembled at the Prime Minister’s residence. The meeting with the Iranian delegation lasted nearly two hours before Araghchi boarded his flight. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sat across from the Iranian FM. Army Chief Asim Munir, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi were all present too.Despite the turnout of Pakistan’s entire security and political elite, the encounter produced no real diplomatic outcome. The gathering looked more like a relay station than a peace summit. Pakistan essentially played messenger rather than mediator.
Tehran refused to meet the US team waiting in Islamabad
ARY News Chairman Kamran Khan cited informed sources saying Tehran was “not ready to meet the US delegation.” That American team included US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, senior adviser and son-in-law of President Donald Trump. Both had travelled to Islamabad specifically for the second round of dialogue. Iran never walked into the same room with them.Instead of engaging in the peace process Pakistan had promised to facilitate, the Iranian side simply dropped off a list of preconditions. Chief among those conditions was the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iranian ports along the Strait of Hormuz. Khan had already warned, before the high-level meetings took place, that talks in Islamabad were “rapidly fading.”
A city locked down for a summit that never arrived
Islamabad went into a suffocating security lockdown ahead of the expected talks. Authorities sealed major roads and put the high-security Red Zone under a strict cordon. Daily life for residents ground to a halt. All that visible state power produced zero diplomatic progress.The second round of talks between Tehran and the US delegation simply never materialised. Tehran’s refusal to meet American representatives on Pakistani soil made the entire setup redundant. All the security theatre amounted to nothing more than inconvenience for ordinary citizens.
Pakistani leaders tried to spin a setback as a success
Prime Minister Sharif took to X to frame the day’s events positively. He described his conversation with Araghchi as a “most warm, cordial exchange of views” and spoke of “further strengthening of Pakistan-Iran bilateral relations.” Deputy PM Dar echoed similar sentiments, stressing “the importance of dialogue and diplomacy” in a separate post on X.The reality told a starkly different story. Islamabad hosted the Iranian FM and the US delegation at the same time yet failed to put them in the same room. Tehran chose to carry its demands to Oman and Russia rather than engage through Pakistani channels. That decision signals clearly that Iran sees those two nations, not Pakistan, as the credible brokers of regional peace.
Pakistan’s track record as a mediator takes another hit
This weekend’s diplomatic failure rhymes painfully with what happened the first time around. The first round of talks hosted in Islamabad brought together US Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliamentary Speaker MB Ghalibaf. Those talks dragged on for a gruelling 21 hours without producing a single concrete outcome. Pakistan’s second attempt at mediating US-Iran dialogue has now ended in an even more visible failure, with Iran departing before the talks even began.Pakistan’s dream of becoming a credible back-channel between Washington and Tehran now looks further away than ever.
