PLAUDITS regarding Pakistan’s role in brokering the US-Iran ceasefire agreement keep pouring in, with US President Donald Trump again acknowledging Islamabad’s key role in brokering the negotiation framework. Fresh from the signing of the ‘Islamabad MoU’, Pakistan participated in a quadrilateral meet along with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkiye. Our country’s standing as a Middle Eastern player is growing. But does this position align with its priorities?

Pakistan has certainly done well to broaden and diversify its relationships across the Middle East, and to have anticipated the need for flexibility in the face of intra-GCC tensions. Islamabad succeeded as a go-between because it had already invested in stronger ties with Doha, Ankara, Cairo and others, largely with an eye to pursuing trade and investment.

But each bilateral relationship and regional bloc will pull Pakistan in different directions. For example, the defence deal signed with Saudi Arabia last September will define Pakistan’s foreign policy, particularly in relation to other integral regional allies such as the UAE and Iran. This alliance has already paid off with the $3 billion backstop provided by Riyadh in April this year after Abu Dhabi called in a payment.

The scope of the agreement will become increasingly relevant in a context where Iran is likely to continue pursuing a nuclear programme. Many perceive the agreement as the first example of an ‘extended deterrence’ arrangement, whereby a nuclear-armed country provides cover for a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The balancing act has been hard enough.

As long as the Tehran-Riyadh relationship remains complex, the question of whether Saudi Arabia will be looking to Pakistan to balance the nuclear dynamics of the region along sectarian lines will remain open. This, in turn, will have implications for Islamabad’s ties with Tehran, which have deepened over recent months, including with growing prospects of Pakistan playing a greater economic role vis-à-vis Iran, particularly as the latter country’s economic lifeline via the UAE is stifled. This balancing act has been hard enough for Pakistan over the decades, but it may yet falter.

Growing bilateral ties with Egypt, meanwhile, will continue to be dominated by Cairo’s desire to make a success of the wobbly ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, which Egypt helped negotiate, and which is key to its national security and economic stability. While Islamabad and Cairo discuss broadening ties to include security cooperation, their joint presence on Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ and plans for international peacekeepers in Gaza — plus the management of erratic bilateral ties with Washington — are likely to take precedence.

The Pakistan-Turkiye relationship, well-established at this point, is also likely to take on more Middle Eastern hues in the wake of the regional war. Rather than seeking a pseudo-imperial regional leadership role — one that prioritised economic relationships and cultural ties with regional players — Ankara is now focused on retaining influence in Syria, and managing its rivalry with Israel. (A key point of friction is Israel’s support for Kurdish groups to destabilise Iran but which would also undermine Turkiye’s efforts to maintain the fragile peace struck with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in 2025).

Pakistan may handle these evolving regional geopolitics deftly, but that will not make them strategic priorities. Even while trouble bubbles in Iran, Pakistan needs to focus on the escalating militancy threat from Afghanistan. Tackling cross-border attacks, such as the ones in Bannu over recent weeks, must take precedence.

Other strategic priority areas include economic growth underpinned by a green tra­­­­nsition, water security and climate resilience, and youth em­­ployment in the age of AI. Pakistan has tentatively engaged with Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Egypt on matters of climate resilience, including, for example, engagement with Ankara on flood resilience and sustainable land management in the run-up to COP31, which will take place in Antalya this year. Pakistan has also engaged with Egypt on climate-resilient farming and seed development. Polite requests for technical expertise and knowledge sharing have yet to translate into long-term initiatives.

For now, Islamabad’s relations with Gulf and Middle Eastern countries remain securitised, with concerns being prioritised primarily when terror threats trickle out to the wider region. Pakistan will only remain a meaningful Middle Eastern player if it benefits equally from the strengthening ties. For that to happen, relations will have to transcend securitised transactionalism to more holistic strategic cooperation, particularly in areas such as climate change and the future of work.

The writer is a political and integrity risk analyst.

X: @humayusuf

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2026