Throwing out feelers

As the USA and Iran try to find a way out, Islamabad is the midst of it

Iran was quick and firm about denying it, but US President Donald Trump made no bones about saying that the USA had made contact with Iran about de-escalation, indeed ending their current war. Conducting backchannel diplomacy in the open is apparently a formula for failure, not forgetting that the interlocutors making these talks possible would be severely embarrassed. That something is afoot is confirmed by how much talk has been generated. It is not just Mr Trump’s claim, but the amount of background information that has been made available by anonymous Administration members. Iran has gone so far as to admit that the USA has approached it indirectly, but claims to have rejected the offer. Mr Trump too has conceded that talks are through intermediaries. He has claimed that it was Iran which had reached out, and that it was willing to cease uranium, and handed over the enriched uranium it had prepared so far. It seems a preliminary stage, but it seems clear that the three countries intervening are Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey. Though the Gulf Arab states are also Muslim, they are to an extent parties to the conflict, hosting US bases and being subject to Iranian attack. The three countries mentioned are heavyweights in their own right.

Because of the backchannel efforts, Mr Trump has put off by five days a bombing campaign against Iran’s energy infrastructure, both its petrochemical facilities and its electricity grid. This seems to be an idea out of the old USAF playbook used in the Kosovo war by NATO against Yugoslavia (now Serbia) in 1999, which brought the Yugoslavs to surrender when the power supply was knocked out. That has been put off, perhaps so that Iranian leadership can assess whether they have enough bottle for the fight under those circumstances.

Pakistan seems to be so much in the vanguard of this move that there is talk circulating of its providing a venue for direct talks between Iranian and US representatives. Hosting such talks, especially if they are successful, would enhance Pakistani prestige not just regionally but internationally, but the purpose of hosting such talks must be to end tne war, which is proving more harmful to the national interest than could have been foreseen. The biggest problem will be Mr Trump’s habit of shooting from the hip, and over that, Pakistan has no control.