EditorialThe TT Take

How Pakistan overtook India in global diplomacy

What does it take to go from an unanswered White House phone call to a UN Security Council seat in two years? Ask Pakistan. The Makkah Defence Pact. US-Iran mediation. An invite from Damascus. India lost Washington's favor in the same stretch.

A prisoner in his own inner citadel

Imran Khan’s sister says he is fit, with normal blood pressure and improved eyesight. Official records document specialist treatment and family access. Yet the international narrative remains one of isolation and medical crisis. The record versus the rhetoric.

Pakistan’s word is now worth a treaty

Countries do not enter mutual defence commitments with partners whose reliability they doubt, because the cost of misjudging that is measured in soldiers. Riyadh and Ankara have decided Pakistan is a state whose word will hold when it is expensive to hold it.

India’s playbook for dissent has run out of pages

A Chief Justice called unemployed youth cockroaches. An exam sat by 22 lakh students was leaked, and some of them killed themselves. India's government waited, then delegitimised, then used force, then blamed Pakistan. Each step has failed.

At Khamenei’s funeral, Pakistan made a statement

Pakistan may have disagreements with Iran, and Iran may have disappointed Pakistan by leaning too warmly towards India at times. But neighbours who share borders must also share funerals.

Pakistan’s Swiss success was bigger than one man

Pakistan’s role at the Lake Lucerne Summit marked a rare diplomatic success, placing Islamabad alongside Qatar as a mediator in the US-Iran process. Shehbaz Sharif gave the effort political direction, while Field Marshal Asim Munir added security credibility.

And we’ll keep on fighting til’ the end

From crisis, isolation and doubt, Pakistan has stepped into the diplomatic centre of gravity. If the US-Iran peace framework holds, Islamabad will not merely have brokered a deal. It will have reminded the world that nations are not condemned to the reputations others write for them.

Pakistan’s mediation role ≠ Israeli normalisation

Pakistan’s role in de-escalation does not amount to acceptance of normalisation with Israel. Islamabad’s Palestine policy remains rooted in statehood, Al-Quds, and pre-1967 borders, not the politics of the Iran file.

India debates while Pakistan mediates

Senior RSS and military remarks in India have reopened the question of dialogue with Pakistan, exposing the limits of New Delhi’s hardline public posture. At the same time, Islamabad is trying to show that its relevance now extends beyond India, through crisis diplomacy involving Iran, the US, the Gulf, China and multilateral finance.

پاکستان کی سفارتی کامیابی، اور بیانیہ کی جنگ

اسلام آباد کی بڑھتی سفارتی حیثیت نے اسے بیانیے کی جنگ کا ہدف بنا دیا ہے۔ نیتن یاہو کے بیانات سے لِنڈسے گراہم کی تنقید تک اور بھارتی میڈیا کے منظم بیانیہ سے پاکستان کے اندر نئے دہشتگردانہ حملوں تک ایک نئی مخالفانہ لَہر اُبھرتی دکھائی دے رہی ہے۔

Pakistan’s diplomatic prowess has made it a target

Pakistan’s growing diplomatic relevance has triggered a sharper narrative war, with foreign criticism, hostile media framing and domestic security incidents being used to cast Islamabad as unstable just as it re-enters the centre of regional diplomacy.

Selective outrage

From South Waziristan to Balochistan and Punjab, Pakistan continues to confront terrorist violence that targets security forces and civilians alike. Yet while the world speaks loudly for other states' victims, Pakistani suffering too often receives silence, indifference, or selective concern.

After Kabul’s fall, the West outsourced its shame to Pakistan

As Pete Hegseth promises a historic review into the Fall of Kabul, the real accounting must extend beyond the airport chaos to the Afghan families left stranded in Pakistan by Western failure, delay and broken promises.

The world capital of diplomacy awaits its Gladiators

Will there be a second Islamabad Talks? Undoubtedly. The notion of an Islamabad Talks 2 have not materialised on cue, but that doesn't mean the process is dead. It means Pakistan holds the only channel both the U.S. and Iran can still use.