Pakistan is intensifying efforts to revive stalled peace talks between the United States and Iran, with its interior minister traveling to Tehran this week to meet Iranian leaders, officials said Wednesday.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi held talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, according to diplomatic sources, in a bid to salvage a memorandum of understanding brokered by Islamabad in June that had opened a 60-day window for high-level negotiations between Washington and Tehran.
The agreement, to which Pakistan is a guarantor, collapsed last month after tensions in the region escalated and the United States and Iran resumed military strikes on one another.
A diplomatic source told Pakistani media that the primary goal of Naqvi’s visit was to follow up on the stalled framework, which had earlier produced technical-level talks in Switzerland mediated by Pakistan and Qatar.
Islamabad’s mediation efforts have so far failed to produce a breakthrough, in part because Oman has since taken the lead on the most contentious issue dividing the two sides: the status of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has indicated it is nearing a separate arrangement with Oman over management of the strait, a critical corridor for global oil shipments.
Officials in Islamabad see the progress on that front as an opening to restart the broader process launched by the June agreement.
Pakistan, which brokered a ceasefire and hosted an earlier round of direct US-Iran talks in April, has positioned itself as the primary channel between Washington and Tehran throughout the five-month-old conflict, though analysts have cautioned that repeated setbacks have tested the limits of its influence.
