ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — For 22 months the United States has run its embassy in Pakistan without an ambassador. On Monday President Donald Trump moved to change that, sending the Senate the name of Natalie A. Baker, the career diplomat who has led the mission as chargé d’affairesThe diplomat who runs an embassy when there is no ambassador. A chargé has the same authority over the mission, but not the rank or the presidential appointment. since January 2025. The choice tells Pakistan three things about how Washington sees the relationship: it values continuity, it sees the country through the lens of the war next door, and it expects the embassy to do the practical work while the big decisions are made elsewhere. Whether Baker gets the title before the year is out will depend on a Senate that changes hands in January.
Baker’s name was one of 22 nominations the White House sent to the Senate. She is described in the list as a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of minister-counselor, from Texas. Before she can present her credentials to President Asif Ali Zardari, she must appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and be confirmed by a vote of the full Senate. Until then she remains what she has been since Donald Blome left Islamabad on January 10, 2025: the most senior American in Pakistan, without the title that usually goes with it.
Who she is
Most of Baker’s career has been spent on the Middle East and North Africa, and several of her postings bear directly on what now fills the in-tray in Islamabad.
Natalie A. Baker, in brief
Source: White House nomination; State Department biography. She has also directed the Office of North African Affairs and served in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
Two lines stand out. The first is Dubai. The Iran Regional Presence OfficeA State Department unit at the US consulate in Dubai that follows Iran for Washington, because the United States has had no embassy in Tehran since 1980. is where the State Department sends people to study Iran from the outside, because it has had no embassy in Tehran for more than four decades. The second is Doha. Qatar is the other country carrying messages between Washington and Tehran in this war, and Baker served there as the embassy’s second-ranking officer before moving to Islamabad. Few American diplomats have seen the Iran problem from as many of the capitals now trying to solve it.
“Few American diplomats have seen the Iran problem from as many of the capitals now trying to solve it.”
An embassy used to waiting
Pakistan has grown used to American chargés. David Hale, the last ambassador to serve a full term, left in August 2018. Three chargés followed him over nearly four years: John Hoover briefly, then Paul Jones and Angela Aggeler. Blome was nominated in October 2021 and arrived only in May 2022. He stayed until January 2025, and Baker has led the embassy since.
The US embassy in Islamabad since August 2018, in months
From David Hale’s departure on August 29, 2018 to November 2026. The ambassador period runs from Donald Blome’s arrival in May 2022 to January 10, 2025.
That record has two readings. The generous one is that the relationship has worked well enough without an ambassador. Chargés carry the same authority over the mission, and Baker has been received at every level, from the Foreign Office to the National Counter Terrorism Centre at Pabbi, where she attended the close of the Inspired Gambit exercise in January. The less generous reading is that for two-thirds of the past eight years Washington did not think the post worth the Senate time it takes to fill it.
The nomination signals that this has changed. Ambassadors matter in South Asian capitals for reasons that are partly ceremonial and partly not. An ambassador presents credentials to the head of state, speaks with the personal authority of the president who appointed him or her, and can be summoned to and heard on Capitol Hill as a confirmed official. In October, according to diplomatic sources, the State Department had already made Baker chargé on a permanent basis and sent a new deputy, Catherine Connell, to work under her. Monday’s nomination completes that move.
The war next door
Much of what Baker would manage as ambassador is shaped by Iran. Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, Pakistan has become one of the two main channels between Washington and Tehran. It hosted the talks in April at which Vice President JD Vance led the American team. Vance now speaks almost every day to Field Marshal Asim Munir and to Qatar’s prime minister about a new ceasefire and a return to nuclear negotiations. In April, as Pakistan pressed for the ceasefire to be extended, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar told Baker that dialogue and diplomacy were the only way forward, and the American side conveyed its appreciation for Pakistan’s role.
At the same time, Washington is tightening the pressure on Iran from every side. Its new Task Force Iron Gate is meant to stop weapons, sanctioned goods and money crossing Iran’s land borders, and Pakistan shares 909 kilometres of one of them. Thousands of tonnes of Iranian cooking gas cross that border every day into Balochistan. An embassy led by an Iran specialist will be better placed to tell the difference between a smuggling network and a family business in Chagai, and to explain to Washington why Pakistan’s border economy cannot be switched off without cost.
“No ambassador replaces the conversations between leaders. What an ambassador does is turn them into something lasting.”
What an ambassador does, and does not do
It would be wrong to expect the nomination to change the shape of the relationship. Under Trump, the most important conversations between the two countries have run between leaders. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Munir were received at the White House in September 2025. The Iran channel runs through the vice president’s office and the field marshal. No ambassador, however well connected, replaces that.
What an ambassador does is the work that turns those conversations into something lasting. The agenda for the next year is crowded, and most of it is commercial.
On the next ambassador’s desk
Sources: project documents; Pakistan’s petroleum ministry; US Central Command.
Energy comes first. Last month Baker held talks with Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik on long-term supply contracts, as American companies looked at selling liquefied natural gas to a country whose main supplier, Qatar, has declared force majeure for the rest of the year. A group of US companies backed by the Trump administration is seeking to build a $4.4 billion LNG terminal and pipeline, with hopes of help from the US Trade and Development Agency, the Development Finance Corporation and the Export-Import Bank. Projects of that size live or die on the kind of patient, unglamorous work embassies do: getting regulators, financiers and ministries to the same table.
Minerals come next. The Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum opens in Islamabad on Thursday, and Washington has made no secret of its interest in Pakistan’s copper, gold and rare earths. An American firm signed a memorandum with the Frontier Works Organisation in September 2025. Turning such memorandums into mines will take years of negotiation over security, royalties and exports, and the people doing it will need an embassy that can speak for the US government with full authority.
Then there is security. Inspired Gambit, now in its 13th round, is one of the oldest training programmes between the two armies. Pakistan’s fight against terrorists operating from Afghan soil, and Washington’s interest in it, will not end with the Iran war. A confirmed ambassador gives that relationship a permanent, senior American voice in Islamabad.
The Senate clock
The timing is awkward. The nomination arrived a week after midterm elections in which Democrats won control of both houses of Congress, taking effect in January. The current Senate, with a Republican majority, has only a few weeks left in its session, broken by the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Under Senate rules, nominations still pending when a session ends are normally sent back to the president unless senators agree otherwise.
Two things work in Baker’s favour. She is a career diplomat, not a political appointee, and such nominees rarely draw strong objections. And since September 2025 the Senate has been able to confirm sub-cabinet nominees, including ambassadors, en blocIn a single vote on a group of nominees, rather than one at a time. The Senate changed its rules in 2025 to allow this for most sub-cabinet posts.. It used the new rule to confirm 48 nominees in one vote that month and 107 in October. If the Foreign Relations Committee moves quickly, she could be included in a year-end package.
Confirmed before the new year
Returned and sent again
Held up by a single senator
None of these outcomes would stop the embassy from working. Baker remains in charge either way. But the difference between a chargé and an ambassador is visible in Islamabad, and a long delay would send its own message.
What Pakistan should read into it
Pakistan should not overread the nomination, as some did with the midterm results last week. Washington’s approach to Pakistan follows its interests in the region, and those interests are now unusually aligned: an end to the Iran war on acceptable terms, open sea lanes, energy deals for American companies, minerals outside China’s control, and a stable partner in the fight against terrorism. A new ambassador will not change those interests. She will be there to serve them.
But it should not underread it either. Choosing someone who already knows the country, its officials and its file is a vote for continuity at a moment when continuity matters. Choosing someone whose career runs through Doha, Dubai, Tripoli and Kuwait says Washington sees Pakistan as part of a wider region, not only through the old lens of Afghanistan and India. And filling a post left empty for most of eight years says the embassy is again expected to carry weight.
The things to watch are practical. The first is the date of the Foreign Relations Committee hearing and what Baker says there about Pakistan’s role in the Iran talks, the border and the energy deals. The second is whether her name appears in a bloc vote before the Senate goes home for the year. The third is what happens at the minerals forum this week and to the LNG terminal plans in the months ahead, because those, more than any confirmation vote, will show whether the relationship that leaders have built at the top is turning into something that lasts below it.
