Since the war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel/the U.S. started, Pakistan has desperately tried to play a double game.
Pakistan’s official statements have criticized Israeli strikes on Iran’s regime and military and expressed support for the Islamic Republic in word. But they have also significantly cooperated with the U.S. against Iran through intelligence sharing and other activities, such as allegedly allowing the United States access to bases for UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) operations targeting Iran.
On March 10, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif congratulated Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei on his appointment as Iran’s new Leader, voicing confidence in his abilities to successfully guide Iran towards further progress.
On March 11, Pakistan co-sponsored a Bahrain-led UN Security Council resolution that condemned Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone attacks on the Gulf states and U.S.-linked targets in the region.
On March 12, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in Jeddah. The visit corresponded with the third week of the U.S.-Israel war against the Islamic Republic: the U.S. and Israel were intensifying their attacks on Iranian regime targets, and Tehran was targeting U.S. bases (as well as residential areas) in Saudi Arabia and neighboring Gulf countries.
“The prime minister expressed Pakistan’s full solidarity and support for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in these challenging times,” read an official press release issued by Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). It said both leaders had an in-depth exchange of views on the recent developments in the region and agreed to work together for regional peace and stability.
Pakistan’s prime minister assured the Saudi crown prince that Pakistan would always stand firmly with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and strive for their mutual desire for peace in the region.
Mosharraf Zaidi, a spokesman for PM Sharif, told the German state broadcaster DW that “Pakistan will be there whenever Saudi Arabia needs assistance,” but Prime Minister Sharif “has (also) been in constant contact with Iranian leadership.”
Pakistan’s top military leader, Field Marshal Asim Munir, was also in Saudi Arabia when Iran attacked Al Kharj and Riyadh. The Saudi Defense Minister said they discussed the strikes and “measures needed to halt them.”
During the earlier U.S.-Israel vs Iran conflict, Pakistan ostensibly provided critical intelligence and infrastructure support. This included supplying its airbases and airspaces for U.S.’ reconnaissance missions, enabling the Americans to collect vital intelligence about Iran. When the conflict broke out, Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir was in the U.S. courting his American bosses and acting against Iranian interests.
Interestingly, when Donald Trump hosted Asim Munir at the White House in June 2025, he observed that Pakistan “knows Iran very well” and added that it is “not bad with Israel,” framing Islamabad as aligned with the United States’ regional interests. Soon after, a U.S.-Israeli precision strike eliminated a senior Iranian military figure.
Now, with another attack on Iran’s power structure, the murmurs have grown sharper. The suggestion is that Pakistan’s military establishment had prior awareness of the attack, perhaps even a role through quiet intelligence-sharing.
However, Pakistan is one of the few countries where Iranian influence is positively received, according to polls conducted by the Pew Research Center. Polls have consistently shown that a very high proportion of Pakistanis view Iran positively.
Journalist Max Fisher wrote:
The only country where Iran’s favorability rating scores above 50 percent is Pakistan, with 76 percent giving the rogue state a positive review. That’s a tad ironic given Pakistan’s treatment of its Shiite minority, a sect with which Iran is closely identified. Pakistani Shiites have been so repeatedly and brutally targeted by terrorist groups that the government’s failure to protect them “amounts to complicity,” according to Human Rights Watch. Perhaps Pakistanis, though, have some sympathy for a country with potential nuclear ambitions and a love of shooting down U.S. drones.
Pakistan does not have diplomatic ties with Israel, and public sentiment sides with the Islamic Republic against the U.S. and Israel.
On June 16, 2025, during the Twelve-Day War between Israel and Iran in June 2025, Mohsen Rezaei, a senior Iranian military commander and member of the national security council, claimed that Pakistan assured Iran it would respond with nuclear weapons if Israel used nuclear missiles. Rezaee also said Iran possesses “undisclosed” military capabilities.
“Pakistan has told us that if Israel uses a nuclear bomb on Iran, then Pakistan will also attack Israel with a nuclear bomb,” General Mohsen Rezaei, an IRGC commander and member of Iran’s National Security Council, said on Iranian state television.
However, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif dismissed the claim, saying Islamabad had made no such commitment. On the same day, Pakistan closed all border crossings with Iran in light of heightened tensions and escalations between Iran and Israel. Iranian parliament members, as well as President Pezeshkian, thanked Pakistan for its pro-Iran stance in the war.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s pact with Saudi Arabia states that aggression against one would be treated as a threat to both.
In his article entitled “Pakistan’s Iran Trap,” political analyst Albert B. Wolf analyzes the impossible position Pakistan has put itself in through the mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and the contradictions in Pakistan’s actions towards both Iran and the Saudis:
“Pakistan’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is among the most transactional and consequential in the Muslim world, built over decades of petrodollars, military advisers and mutual strategic convenience,” writes Wolf.
The analyst gives concrete examples. For instance, in 1998, when then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif needed cover to conduct a nuclear bomb test in the face of certain Western sanctions, it was Saudi Arabia that provided 50,000 barrels of oil a day, free of charge, to cushion the blow. Pakistani troops guarded Saudi Arabia’s northern border during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. A former Pakistani army chief commands a Saudi-led counterterrorism force in Riyadh today.
Wolf points out further inconsistencies in Pakistan’s foreign policy toward the Gulf states and Iran:
When Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched airstrikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in 2015, Pakistan’s parliament voted not to join them. The rebuke from Gulf officials was sharp. A senior Emirati diplomat complained publicly that despite “inevitable” financial support from Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, “Tehran seems to be more important to Islamabad than the Gulf countries.” Pakistan absorbed the criticism, maintained its equidistance, and kept its western border with Iran quiet.
Wolf concludes that “Islamabad shows up for Riyadh when the costs are manageable and the threat is distant. It finds reasons to step back when they are not.”
However, the recent violent protests in front of the U.S. consulate in Karachi which led to the deaths of Pakistanis, some of whom were armed, demonstrates that Pakistan is no longer be able to balance out its commitments to both Saudis and Iran while also satisfying the ambitions of its anti-U.S., radical Islamic populations:
“The audience cost calculus that once made Pakistani neutrality workable has collapsed,” writes Wolf. “When Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah was killed in September 2024, the Pakistani state successfully managed domestic outrage through performative protest and carefully channeled rhetoric—a pressure-release valve that kept the street satisfied without a single death at the U.S. consulate. That was also the moment Islamabad secured its 24th IMF bailout, a $7 billion Extended Fund Facility that cemented its accountability to international creditors, who have no appetite for regional adventurism.
“The 22 rioters killed in front of the American consulate in Karachi on March 1 suggest that the same toolkit no longer works,” he continues. “The street has not merely expressed outrage—it has taken action against sensitive diplomatic installations on its territory. The state’s capacity to act as a neutral arbiter has not been strained. It has been visibly broken.”
Wolf highlights what he calls “Pakistan’s commitment trap” in its foreign policy towards Tehran, Riyadh, and Kabul:
If Islamabad honors the pact and moves toward military solidarity with Riyadh, it risks Iran abandoning the bilateral ‘ballistic silence’ that has kept the western border stable since a January 2024 missile exchange—a crisis both states resolved within 72 hours precisely because neither wanted international scrutiny of their respective nuclear and ballistic programs. It also risks handing the Afghan Taliban, which has committed to cooperating with Iran in the face of American aggression, an incentive to open a second front.
If Islamabad stays silent, it concedes that the pact is worthless—destroying the deterrent value it was designed to create, inviting a sharp rebuke from Riyadh, and potentially destabilizing the financial lifeline of Saudi debt rollovers and Gulf remittances that keep Pakistan’s economy afloat. More than 4 million Pakistanis reside in Gulf states as migrant laborers. One was killed when an Iranian missile struck Abu Dhabi on the first day of the war.
And if Islamabad attempts to thread the needle, it risks satisfying no one, while the street at home grows louder and the Taliban watches for an opening.
Pakistan’s policy vis-à-vis Iran and the Saudis, as well as the U.S., is not its first “double game” in foreign policy. In fact, Pakistan has employed similar double game tactics during its interactions with terror groups on its own soil, its nuclear technology proliferation, as well as its support for the Taliban against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
One remarkable example of this double game is Pakistan’s acceptance of billions in aid from the U.S. while subsequently supporting Islamic terrorist groups (despite promising to fight them). To this day, Pakistan has many anti-American, Islamic terror groups with close ties to government bodies.
In the 1990s, the U.S. accused Pakistan of sharing sensitive military and nuclear technology with other nations and later of transferring American-made technology to China. In addition, during the Afghanistan war, Pakistan frequently threatened to block vital NATO supply routes, forcing the U.S. to rely on a tenuous logistical link.
It is well-documented that Pakistan has consistently fostered anti-American sentiment, engaging in what President Trump called a “lies and deceit” campaign. Trump posted on Twitter on January 1, 2018:
The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!
Given this history of Pakistan’s foreign policy towards the U.S. and other nations, it is not shocking that Islamabad is once again running with the hare and hunting with the hound, trying to play both sides while providing neither side with consistent support or stability.
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