Pakistan’s leaders had almost lost hope after more than two weeks of urgent negotiations, phone calls and diplomatic meetings aimed at ending the US-Israeli war with Iran.
What began as a major push to prevent the conflict from spilling further over Pakistan’s borders appeared to be moving in the wrong direction. Instead of easing tensions, the crisis seemed to be heading toward the kind of escalation Islamabad had feared most.
Analysts now say Pakistani officials played a central role in helping bring about a breakthrough that has, at least for the moment, helped avert a much deeper catastrophe.
The effort came after days of intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy involving senior Pakistani figures trying to push the parties toward a ceasefire. The source describes the process as frantic, with continuous contacts and summits as the situation worsened.
A bleak moment in cabinet
At a cabinet meeting around 5pm on Tuesday, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, was described as downbeat about the prospects for peace. He told ministers: “We should brace ourselves for the impact of the war,” adding that “the situation has really become very bleak” and that “the chance of peace has become dim.”
Those remarks reflected the mood inside the government as officials watched the conflict unfold and worried about the consequences for Pakistan and the wider region.
For Pakistan, the stakes were severe. A worsening war between the US, Israel and Iran would have created major security, political and economic risks. The country’s diplomatic push was therefore aimed not only at calming the immediate crisis but also at preventing a broader regional emergency.
According to the source, the result of those efforts was a ceasefire that may have pulled the region back from the brink. While the long-term outlook remains uncertain, the immediate outcome has been viewed in Islamabad as a major diplomatic success.
The episode has been described by analysts as Pakistan’s biggest diplomatic win in years, underscoring how much the country’s officials invested in the effort and how close the situation came to a far more dangerous outcome.
For now, the ceasefire has created a pause in the fighting and given regional actors time to assess the next steps. But the tense negotiations that preceded it suggest how fragile the situation remains, and how quickly the conflict could have moved in a far worse direction without sustained diplomacy.
