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PAKISTAN’S fortunes oscillate between spectacular successes and forgettable failures. Take its recent role in the US-Iran negotiations. It led to a memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran, signed on June 15. The parties will sit face to face in Switzerland on Friday, June 19. Will this MoU be enough for a chastened US and a revivified Iran?
There is no country on earth (except Israel) that does not welcome the cessation of this war. It had no legal justification, no palpable purpose. It has resulted in needless suffering, incalculable losses and avoidable deaths.
No war is ever necessary, no matter what belligerent politicians may postulate. During the 1939-45 war, prime minister Winston Churchill, on being asked by president Franklin D. Roosevelt what it should be called, replied at once: “The Unnecessary War”.
Even seasoned soldiers like Churchill’s ally Gen Dwight Eisenhower, who led the D-Day invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944, decried war. He confessed that he hated war, “as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity”.
Our closeness to Trump has sharpened Modi’s hostility towards us.
Despite this advice from a predecessor, President Donald Trump intends to keep war on his bucket list of things to do before he quits the Oval Office. Until then, his next war could be anywhere — Cuba, any mineral-rich country in South America or Africa — or even Iran again, for Trump’s war chariot is drawn by two beasts: the restive US military-industrial machine and the restless, homicidal Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump may hold the whip; these two decide the chariot’s course.
Since his visit to China, Trump has shrunk the outer perimeter of American ambitions to the Near East. He has sacrificed the redundant tail of Taiwan. It will soon be reattached to the body of mainland China.
While Pakistan has every reason to congratulate itself on the US-Iran deal, such an achievement comes at a price. Internally, domestic tensions between the provinces and arguments amongst political parties remain unresolved. The recently announced national budget continues to be a challenge to socioeconomics, just as the Leaning Tower of Pisa defies gravity.
Our inward remittances of $38.3 billion exceed merchandise exports of $30bn. Pensions of Rs1.2 trillion payable to our retirees (both civilian and service personnel) exceed the cost of running the civil government (Rs1.07tr). We are living beyond our means even while internationally we are succeeding beyond our dreams.
Our proximity to Trump’s White House has sharpened the blade of PM Narendra Modi’s hostility towards us. On May 26, 2026, Modi completed 12 years in power. He is the longest serving elected prime minister of India, surpassing the tenure of the midwife of Independence — Jawaharlal Nehru.
Just before Modi was elected prime minister in 2014, an American author, Andy Marino, published a political biography of him. Marino narrates how during the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, a teenaged Narendra “personally witnessed aspects of the conflict at close quarters” because he served complimentary cups of tea to soldiers on their way to the front, and to the returning wounded. Marino quotes someone close to Modi: “Narendra was charged up and voluble on how all Pakistanis should be decimated.”
Marino concludes his paean to Modi (then a candidate for prime minister) with the observation that the Delhi establishment dismissed Modi as the “chaiwala who had no right to cross the threshold of 7 Race Course Road” (now Kalyan Marg). Modi retaliated by calling them the “Delhi Club” — a metaphor for “an overrated Indian political elite, a colonial relic”.
Most recently, PM Modi has taken on another club: his immediate neighbour, the venerable Delhi Gymkhana Club. Established in 1913, the patrician DGC sprawls over 27 acres, twice the area of the PM’s estate. Modi’s government ordered the club to vacate its premises as “the land is needed for defence-related infrastructure and other strategic purposes”.
Another unilateral action — the weaponisation of water — is being used by PM Modi against us. On June 9, his minister of water C.R. Patil announced that “not a single drop of water will go [to Pakistan] in the coming years”, ie, certainly until May/June 2029 when the next Indian general election is due, and thereafter — if Modi is re-elected for a fourth term.
In January 2029, Trump should have vacated the White House. Our own general election is scheduled for Feb 28, 2029. If we are to reap a harvest from Trump’s current bromance with our leadership, it should be before then.
But it would be wise, meanwhile, to be on our guard against PM Modi’s continuing hostility. Trump fights short wars; Modi bears long grudges — in our case, since 1965.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2026
