Views from The Thursday Times' editorial desk.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On the 88th death anniversary of Allama Iqbal, it is worth asking not only what he meant to the making of Pakistan, but what his ideas demand of the country now. As Islamabad tries to keep open channels between Iran and the United States, Iqbal’s poetry feels less like memory and more like instruction.
After years of being defined by debt scares, bailouts and economic uncertainty, Pakistan is showing signs of a broader recovery marked by renewed market access, stronger investor confidence, diplomatic relevance and momentum that isn't stopping anytime soon.
