Pakistan offers to host US-Iran peace talks as deal advances

Pakistan has moved itself into the center of the Iran-U.S. diplomatic track, offering to host the next round of talks very soon as Donald Trump said a deal was “largely negotiated” and final details would be announced shortly. The timing is striking: after days of backchannel work, Islamabad is no longer just watching the crisis. It is trying to become the venue that turns a fragile understanding into a political outcome.

Shehbaz Sharif said Pakistan hoped to host the next round of Iran-U.S. talks very soon and later praised Trump’s “extraordinary efforts to pursue peace” after what he described as a productive call involving regional leaders. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said “meaningful progress” had been achieved and that a positive, durable outcome was within reach. Those comments followed Pakistan’s stepped-up diplomatic push on May 21, when Tehran said it was reviewing Washington’s latest responses and Trump said he could wait a few days for “the right answers” but was also willing to resume attacks.

Pakistan’s leverage comes from access rather than hard power. Field Marshal Asim Munir’s visit to Tehran was described in multiple reports as a consequential part of the backchannel, suggesting Islamabad can still speak credibly to both Washington and Tehran at a moment when direct trust is thin. Trump said on May 23 that he had spoken with leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkiye, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Pakistan, and separately with Benjamin Netanyahu, showing that the talks are already being threaded through a wider regional network.

What remains unresolved matters more than the choreography. The United States and Iran still stood apart on Tehran’s uranium stockpile and on control of the Strait of Hormuz, even as both sides signaled progress. Several reports said an emerging framework could include reopening the waterway, but Iranian reporting said it would remain under Iranian control. That gap shows why Pakistan’s offer matters: a host in Islamabad would give the talks a regional platform and a middleman with enough ties to keep both sides engaged.

For U.S. readers, the larger shift is that this crisis is being managed less like a pure Washington-Tehran confrontation and more like a regional security negotiation with multiple Arab and Muslim capitals involved. If Pakistan gets the table, it gains diplomatic weight as an intermediary, while the United States gains a channel that could help manage the nuclear dispute, maritime access and the risk of renewed strikes. The negotiations may be near the finish line, but the hardest choices over uranium and the Strait of Hormuz will determine whether they hold.