When Israel and the US jointly attacked Iran on February 28, the world watched in horror the beginning of an unprovoked, illegal and unjustified war in which the Iranians lost their Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as school-going children in Minab. The next few weeks saw destruction all around as Iran fought back bravely despite losing the Ayatollah and leaders like Ali Larijani. Economies around the world suffered setbacks due to the oil and gas crisis caused by the war. There was panic about inflation and recession if the war continued any longer. Then, we saw the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, post an expletive-laden social media post on Easter Sunday. People were not surprised but a bit worried at his anger. The really shocking post, though, was when he wrote that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”. This made many nervous because it meant something disastrous was going to happen.
We were hours away from Trump’s deadline when Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, posted on X requesting Trump to extend his deadline for two weeks and Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz for two weeks as a goodwill gesture, urging both sides to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to “allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war”. Both sides gave a positive response and thus the first round of direct high-level talks was held in Islamabad on April 11. While there was no breakthrough at the end of the first round, there was optimism that things are moving in the right direction.
A second round of talks between the US and Iran was on the cards in Islamabad this week before the temporary ceasefire ended but they have been postponed. We don’t know when they will take place. However, backchannel diplomacy by Pakistan led to an extension of the ceasefire as Trump said on Tuesday that he was extending the Iran ceasefire until an Iranian proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded. We have seen Pakistan engage in global diplomacy of the kind we have not witnessed by any other country in this conflict. Pakistan’s chief of army staff and chief of defence forces, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, went to Tehran last week and held meetings with Iran’s civil and military leadership while Sharif was on a trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. There is no doubt that Pakistan’s civil and military leadership have been working non-stop on ending this conflict, especially at a time when many countries chose to remain silent.
A ceasefire extension can be viewed both positively and negatively. The positive aspect is, of course, that there will not be further escalation for the time being. The negative aspect is how the fog of war still looms large. Will this war ever end? Is this really just a smokescreen and is further escalation on the cards? This is something we cannot predict because of the unpredictability of the Trump administration and the designs of the regime in Israel.
It is no secret that this war is Israel’s war on Iran. The US had no reason to go to war with Iran. Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, had revealed last month how Iran and the US were close to a deal when the US and Israel suddenly attacked Iran. Albusaidi, who was mediating the talks, wrote that the US has “lost control of its own foreign policy” and described the war as a “catastrophe” and a “grave miscalculation”. He also accused Israel of persuading the Trump administration to go to war with Iran. He is not the only one. We heard the US secretary of state, John Kerry, reveal how the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, repeatedly urged several US administrations to carry out military strikes on Iran but they all refused. “President Obama refused. President Biden refused. President Bush refused. The only president who has agreed to this, obviously, is President Trump.”
Iran has not made any excessive demands to end the war but the US certainly has. This conflict needs to end but it cannot without proper guarantees that Iran will not be attacked at will again. These guarantees must be given by the US. The world cannot afford an escalation or be on the verge of World War III.
Mehmal Sarfraz is a journalist based in Lahore; mehmal.s@gmail.com
