Iqbal Latif

What Did Pakistan Gain? People keep asking, “What did Pakistan get? Where is the money?” Money? What money? They are measuring diplomacy with the wrong yardstick. Pakistan’s greatest gain was not financial. It was strategic. Pakistan gained stature. It gained respect. It gained mutual admiration. Above all, it gained a relationship of trust with its neighbour, Iran. The state visit of President Masoud Pezeshkian to Pakistan symbolised that transformation. He was welcomed with the highest honours of the Pakistani state—a full ceremonial reception, a guard of honour, a 21-gun salute, fighter aircraft escort, and the presence of Pakistan’s entire civilian and military leadership. Such honours reflected the importance Pakistan attached to this relationship and the warmth with which the Iranian President was received. This is no ordinary diplomatic achievement. Imagine a country capable of walking one of the finest diplomatic tightropes in modern geopolitics. Pakistan maintains a close strategic and mutual defence relationship with Saudi Arabia while simultaneously enjoying the confidence and friendship of Iran. Very few countries are trusted by both. If Pakistan succeeds in becoming a bridge between Saudi Arabia and Iran, it will have achieved something generations of diplomats have sought but failed to accomplish. Stability between these two great regional powers would transform the geopolitics of the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. Pakistan’s diplomacy with the United States also demonstrated that dialogue can achieve what confrontation cannot. The negotiations culminating in the June 2025 understandings showed that diplomacy remains the most powerful instrument of statecraft. In my view, the patient efforts led by Field Marshal Asim Munir helped convince President Donald Trump that engagement, rather than continued escalation, offered the better path forward. Those who judge success only by the size of a cheque miss the larger picture. The real dividend lies ahead. Iran possesses the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and some of the largest oil resources on Earth. If today’s trust eventually enables the long-discussed Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline to become operational, and one day extends onwards to India, the benefits will dwarf any short-term financial package. Energy security, expanded trade, regional connectivity, and economic interdependence would become the foundation of lasting peace. Countries connected by pipelines, commerce, and shared prosperity have far greater incentives to cooperate than to fight. History rarely remembers the size of an aid package. It remembers the nations that changed the course of events. Pakistan did not merely gain goodwill. It gained strategic trust. It gained regional stature. It gained brotherly relationships. It gained the confidence of neighbours and major powers alike. That trust cannot be printed, borrowed, or purchased. It is earned. And that is what Pakistan gained.