Islamabad set to host Iran-US Truce parleys: Who is the true winner?

The Middle East was burning and bleeding. U.S. and Israel jointly launched a series of ruthless military assaults on Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran showed utmost retaliation and the whole world started watching as a pack of silent spectators. All the Gulf States had already become a party as the US Forces were using the Military Bases of the Gulf State to attack and bomb Iran and in retaliation, Iran also started sending its missiles to these countries, mainly targeting these US controlled Military Bases. Similarly the rest of the world, particularly the Western World also preferred to just wait and watch instead of making any effort to bring this deadly conflict to an end and to forge the peace in the highly sizzling and explosive part of the world with destruction enhancing and escalating, day by day and even hour by hour, yet no one was showing any willingness to jump into the arena and to negotiate peace between the highly hostile parties.

Islamabad is set to host Iran-US Truce parleys.

Pakistan explores ways and means to ensure peace

It was the neighboring Islamic Republic of Pakistan where both people and government were equally feeling very much disturbed and perturbed with situation going on just across the road and were very enthusiastic to find out ways and means to bring peace to the neighborhood and to stop destruction to expand further and bring an end to the growing global miseries and upcoming troubles, emerging out of this man-made catastrophe with all the possibilities of eventually pushing the entire global community into extreme  energy, oil and food crisis.

Following the desires of the people of Pakistan and realizing to its commitments and responsibilities for peace and harmony, Pakistan’s political and military leadership and the maestro diplomats at its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, started exploring ways and means to ensure peace.  While country’s Prime  Shehbaz Sharif started using his official as well as personal relations with both the Iranian and Arabian and GCC leaders and US leadership as well, there on the other hand country’s Military Chief ,Field Marshal General Asim Munir started exploring Pakistan’s Defense and  Strategic relations in the region and across the global, Similarly the seasoned diplomats and diplomatic strategists also started exploring different opting for a truce in the Middle East. At the same time, Islamabad was constantly keeping Beijing on boards with every minute development and as both Islamabad and Beijing move forward on all the regional and global issues with shared perceptions and joint views, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister, after holding crucial talks with Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkeiy etc, straight away embarked upon and swift trip to Beijing and shared the latest developments with Beijing and returned with a positive note and Beijing’s nod for moving forward to forge peace. 

Pakistan assumed the full-fledged role of the Ambassador of Peace with pat on the back from Beijing full cooperation from both Washington and Tehran. Islamabad started negotiating peace with both Tehran and Washington and also began facilitating soft communications between both the major parties. The efforts resulted in both sides beginning to exchange pre-requisites and conditions for holding a dialogue to end the war.

All these joint efforts of Pakistan’s political and military leadership as well as country’s ace diplomats resulted into a joint success when the US President, just a couple of hours before the end of his given deadline to launch a mega and massive attack to bomb Iran, threatening to elikminate Iran’s civilization, suddenly announced that on situation which Pakistan had created to negotiate peace, he was ordering the ceasefire with Iran for not less than a period of 15 days and was ready to forge peace through dialogue that Pakistan will host at its Capital City of Islamabad. Tehran also welcomed the development and responded with positive note to Islamabad’s efforts and showed its complete willingness to send its high-level delegation to Islamabad to truce parleys. On the other side US President announced that he is sending truce delegation to Islamabad under the leadership of US Vice President JD Vance while Tehran’s peace negotiators are announced to be headed by Iranian Parliament’s Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.

Washington starts dancing to the tunes of Tehran

The delegations have started arriving in Islamabad,and the parleys are likely to start at 10 AM Saturday morning. Pakistan’s  Army Chief, Chief of Defense Forces, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, called on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the Prime Minister’s House. Both leaders expressed satisfaction over the reduction in tensions so far. The meeting reviewed the progress made in Pakistan’s mediation efforts for lasting peace in the region. Both leaders demanded that all parties maintain peace and a ceasefire, and on this occasion, the commitment to continue facilitating and providing all possible cooperation for a peaceful negotiated solution was reiterated. The patience and tolerance shown by the parties were appreciated in the meeting. The Prime Minister praised the commitment of the parties involved in this process and prayed for success in their efforts to achieve peace.

Now both parties, i.e. Iran and United States are coming to hold the truce talks on Saturday. One has to see what is the actual status of both sides is to hold negotiations. Although both sides are claiming to be winners with US President Donald Trump continuing with threats to Iran if a peace deal is failed to be achieved via Islamabad Talks, yet he appears to be actually agreeing to all the terms and conditions of Tehran and it would not be and exaggeration to say that Washington has started dancing to the tunes of Tehran. On Thursday Tehran threatened that if Israel will not stop it attacks on Lebanon, Tehran will pull out of Talks with the US at Islamabad.  Trump responded to this development by saying that he can’t do anything as Lebanon was not part of the conditions. Surprisingly, on Friday Israel announce holding back attacks on Lebanon and White House also stated that Israel will stop attacking Lebanon. Similarly Iran started collecting toll from the Ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz, the US President did not make any objection to it. There are many other incident happening in the last 24 to 48 hours that indicate clearly that Washington is agreeing to whatever Tehran is asking for. Trump’s offering a healthy relief for Tehran in Trade Tariff also clarifies that US has already agreed to Imports from Tehran.

It is believed that there could be a sort of limited deadlock over a few Iranian conditions during the Islamabad Talks that includes Iran’s continuing with its civilian nuclear projects and missile production Program. The deadlock could also include the financial control of Strait of Hormuz like imposing of heavy toll collections etc and a few other matters. However it is believed that Iran would not return from Islamabad empty handed while the US may. It is also expected that the Islamabad Talks could be the basic breakthrough of forging a permanent peace in the Middle East while the event could also result into an era of better and prosperous US- Iran relations. Iran would also like to enhance good relations with JD Vance who is considered to be potential next US President and is considered as a better person to deal with by Iranians.

(The Author is the President and Editor In Chief of Pakistan’s English language Newspaper The Daily Mail International and can be reached at makhbabr@hotmail.com)