Trump’s use of Pakistan as potential mediator with Iran sparks reminiscences of Nixon’s China talks and Bangladesh liberation

Pakistan’s emergence as Washington’s selection as a mediator in talks with Iran might be defined in numerous methods. Since Operation Sindoor in May 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump has been flattered by Pakistan’s description of him as a “peacemaker”, and he has reportedly constructed a private rapport with Pakistan’s Field Marshal General Asim Munir and Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif, assembly them numerous occasions.

In specific, Mr. Trump hosted General Munir to lunch on the White House in June final yr, amidst the final U.S.-Israeli strikes in June 2025, in an effort reportedly to make sure that Pakistan wouldn’t help Iran militarily.

Pakistan’s provide of a vital minerals deal to the U.S. and choice to hitch the Gaza Board of Peace (BoP) have additionally helped forge the connection.

For Iran, Pakistan’s benefit over many different potential mediators isn’t solely its proximity but additionally the truth that it doesn’t recognise Israel, and thus isn’t amenable to issues or inputs from the Netanyahu authorities. This could go well with Mr. Trump as nicely, who has reportedly conveyed a 15-point proposal to the federal government in Tehran which it hopes would result in a ceasefire.

However, Washington’s choice to interact Pakistan as a facilitator for talks may additionally be rooted in historical past, given Islamabad, and a special General’s function in facilitating U.S. talks with China 55 years in the past, on the peak of the Cold War.

At that point, U.S. President Richard Nixon had begun to work on his plan to open up relations with Beijing (U.S. nonetheless formally recognised Taiwan because the Republic of China (ROC)), however direct Sino-U.S. Ambassadorial talks had floundered. Pakistan was not the primary possibility, as he and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger thought-about others, together with Poland, France and Romania.

Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and chief of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), turned down the thought of France as he wished a “non-Western” channel.  The Warsaw monitor fell aside after two rounds of talks between U.S. and Chinese officers, as Mao Zedong protested U.S. assaults on Cambodia, which have been a part of a U.S. Army effort to chop off provides to Vietnamese troops.

While Mr. Nixon’s want for companions in Asia, because the Vietnam warfare drained the U.S., drove him to hunt China, Sino-Soviet tensions gave Mr. Mao a motive to interact with Washington.

The U.S. tried Romania, working by way of President Nicolai Ceausescu to achieve out to the Chinese authorities, however hit an sudden block. “We went to the Romanians, thinking they were most independent of the East Europeans and they were communists and therefore the Chinese would like that. Turns out the one group the Chinese didn’t trust were Communists,” Mr. Kissinger informed journalist Tom Brokaw many years later, explaining that Beijing feared Romanian officers would reveal particulars to the Kremlin, who would try to sabotage the method.

By then, Mr. Nixon had additionally established a secret channel to the PRC’s management by way of Pakistani President General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, whom he first met throughout a state go to to Pakistan in 1969. “In Nixon’s view, Khan was an attractive intermediary since he had good relations with the leaders of both the United States and the PRC, and he also provided a means to circumvent the U.S. Department of State, which Nixon feared might oppose or publicise his initiative,” data the U.S. Office of the Historian, in a observe concerning the China opening.

According to at least one account, the White House despatched two an identical notes, one by way of President Yahya Khan, and one other by way of President Ceausescu, nevertheless it was Pakistan’s Ambassador to Washington Agha Hilaly who returned with a response first, an entire month earlier than his Romanian counterpart did. In July 1971, Mr. Kissinger travelled to Pakistan, the place he feigned an sickness and was taken to Nathiagali (close to Murree), away from the eyes of the press corps and even his personal diplomats in Islamabad. Gen. Khan had organized for a industrial PIA flight 707 to take him from Rawalpindi to Peking (Beijing) for talks.

Mr. Kissinger, who had been hosted been hosted by Indian officers a day earlier than reportedly used “Delhi belly” as his excuse, to make sure a 64-hour getaway that included assembly Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and different officers in China for the primary time. Planning for Mr. Nixon’s go to to China in February 1972, that he known as the ‘week that changed the world’, had begun.

The occasion had deep and lasting impacts for South Asia as nicely. Mr. Nixon’s preoccupation together with his back-channel to China, and deep-seated rancour in opposition to India, determined to show a blind eye as Pakistan’s troops unleashed a genocide on Bengalis in East Pakistan. On March 25, 1971, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight, killing an estimated three million over the following 9 months, in keeping with the Bangladesh authorities.

On April 28 1971, Mr. Kissinger despatched a memo to Mr. Nixon detailing choices earlier than the U.S.: (1) help Pakistan militarily; (2) keep neutrality; (3) assist “Yahya achieve a negotiated settlement”.

Mr. Nixon’s directions, regardless of determined telegrams from the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka concerning the violence, was clear. “To all hands, don’t squeeze Yahya at this time,” he wrote, checking possibility (3).

The crackdown led lakhs of refugees to flee to India, spurring India’s help to the Muktibahini motion led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had gained Pakistani General elections in December 1970 however was imprisoned. The India-Pakistan warfare adopted the place the U.S. even tried to threaten India by dispatching a naval fleet, however in the end, Bangladesh was fashioned by December that yr. India’s perspective was additionally formed by the 20-year Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation signed in August 1971.

The Trump administration, most likely, didn’t delve deeply into the historic strains to its choice to make use of General Munir to convey its proposal to Tehran, or in sending high U.S. officers to Islamabad for talks. It is obvious that among the patterns from the previous relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan have been repeated, though the similarity in conditions ends there, whereas different ties between India-U.S. and China-Russia have modified immeasurably. Much will now depend upon how the Iranian management, that has continued counter-strikes regardless of struggling intensive injury from U.S.-Israeli assaults, together with the focused killings of its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and National Security Advisor Ali Larijani, decides to reply.

Published – March 25, 2026 11:28 am IST