Pakistan condemned US strikes on Iran while quietly aiding them, highlighting a deeper identity crisis between its public Islamic solidarity narrative and its private strategic dependence on US support.
In the wake of the United States’ aerial bombardment of Iran’s enrichment facilities on June 22, 2025, Pakistan’s foreign policy entered a zone of acute dissonance between public solidarity and private pragmatism. The Pakistani government’s official statements condemned the strikes as an unwarranted violation of Iranian sovereignty and international law, invoking historical ties of culture, religion, and regional interdependence. Yet, behind closed doors, chronological events suggest that Islamabad continued to engage in indispensable security cooperation with Washington, providing overflight rights, intelligence sharing, and logistical support that materially underpinned US operations in the region.
Why Is Pakistan Close with Both Iran and America?
This duality has prompted a fierce debate in Islamabad, Tehran, Washington, and beyond: does Pakistan’s posture represent genuine solidarity with its Shi’ite-majority neighbor, or is it yet another instance of strategic betrayal, an example of Muslim-world unity sacrificed at the altar of realpolitik?
The origins of this dilemma lie in Pakistan’s perennial quest to reconcile two often competing pillars of its national interest: its identity as a leading voice of the Muslim ummah and its security and economic survival.
Since the early years of statehood, Pakistani elites have self-fashioned their country as a protector of Muslim causes, from vocal support for the Palestinian struggle to advocacy on behalf of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province. This posture has bolstered Pakistan’s prestige across the Islamic world and provided a source of domestic legitimacy.
Simultaneously, however, Islamabad’s record is marked by recurrent partnerships with non-Muslim powers, most notably the United States, whose military aid, intelligence cooperation, and technological transfers have been critical in Pakistan’s battles against insurgencies, particularly the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the northwest and Jaish al-Adl on its southwestern frontier.
The airstrikes of June 22 thus put Pakistan’s balancing act under a harsh spotlight. Publicly, the government issued forceful condemnations, characterizing the US operations as an illegal act that flouted United Nations resolutions and posed the gravest threat to regional stability since the 2024 missile exchanges along the Iran-Pakistan border.
Ambassador Shafqat Ali Khan emphasized Pakistan’s “stands in resolute solidarity with the people of Iran.” At the same time, the foreign ministry lodged formal protests at the United Nations and called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council. In Karachi, candlelight vigils and student demonstrations outside the Iranian embassy reinforced the narrative of fraternal devotion, and Pakistani television broadcasts replayed footage of recent martyrdom ceremonies in Iran, further accentuating the emotive tenor of public sympathy.
Yet if the public record conveyed indignation, the private record conveyed accommodation. Although Pakistan is rejecting, unverified sources confirm that Pakistan granted the US overflight permissions for tanker and reconnaissance flights en route to Gulf airbases, permissions that were secured through secure diplomatic channels just days before the strikes commenced.
These arrangements had been formalized under the auspices of the Trump administration’s expanded counter-terrorism cooperation. They were regarded in Rawalpindi as indispensable for mitigating insurgent threats along the Balochistan-Iran frontier, where Sunni separatist groups have historically benefited from Tehran’s hard-line suppression and local Sunni grievances.
Iran Is Infuriated with Pakistan’s Disloyalty
This disjunction between Islamabad’s rhetoric and its actions has not gone unnoticed in Tehran. Senior commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) branded Pakistan’s public denunciations as theatrical. They charged that Islamabad had purposefully facilitated US aggression under the guise of counter-terrorism cooperation. Iranian media outlets have amplified these accusations, citing anonymous IRGC sources who assert that Pakistani airspace and intelligence were vital in enabling the precise targeting of underground centrifuge halls at Natanz.
On the other hand, Iranian officials claimed that Pakistan had assured Tehran of a nuclear response if Israel used atomic weapons against Iran. Pakistan swiftly denied these assertions. Dar labeled the claims as “fabricated” and “irresponsible,” reaffirming Pakistan’s India-centric nuclear posture and commitment to regional peace.
In response, Tehran has deployed troops to stop infiltration by what the official called terrorists. This rupture threatens to undo years of negotiated cooperation aimed at curbing arms trafficking and insurgent movement in the porous 560-mile frontier that separates the countries.
From Islamabad’s perspective, however, the calculus is straightforward: the government cannot allow its strategic options to be constricted by moral absolutism. Pakistan’s national security establishment perceives a direct nexus between American intelligence support and its ability to pre-empt or disrupt hostile non-state actors in Balochistan, actors whom it blames for a spate of recent suicide bombings in Quetta and attacks on CPEC (China–Pakistan Economic Corridor) infrastructure. The diminution in US ties would embolden these groups and risk tipping the fragile security balance, potentially replaying the dire scenario of 2008–2009, when insurgent violence reached unprecedented levels.
Moreover, with Pakistan teetering on the brink of an energy crisis and reliant on international financial institutions for bailout funds, Islamabad cannot afford to antagonize Washington, whose influence over the International Monetary Fund and World Bank remains significant.
The US-Pakistan Bond Is Growing Stronger
This realism, however, exacts a cost in the realm of credibility. Pakistan’s image as a principled defender of Muslim causes, one that underpinned its standing at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and among Non-Aligned Movement partners, now rings hollow to many observers. The political opposition in Pakistan has seized upon this dissonance, with factions on both right and left condemning the government for selling out Islamic solidarity and nominating Trump for the Nobel Prize.
On social media, the trending hashtag #PakistanBetrayedIran underscores the depth of public disillusionment, while political parties are loud about the secret pacts with the United States. Even Pakistan’s Gulf allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who themselves balance between supporting Sunni factions and their ties to the US, have privately cautioned Islamabad against appearing too eager to facilitate operations against Tehran, warning of potential long-term blowback to regional stability.
The emerging question, then, is whether Pakistan can recalibrate its approach to reconcile the divergent imperatives of solidarity and strategic necessity. One avenue lies in transparent diplomacy. Islamabad could proactively offer its facilities as a venue for multilateral talks aimed at defusing US-Iran tensions, emphasizing its impartiality, which stems from its substantive ties to both sides. Such a mediating role would draw upon Pakistan’s unique positioning: a majority-Muslim state that sustains robust relations with Washington while historically maintaining respectful ties with Tehran.
In doing so, Pakistan would pivot from being a covert enabler of US operations to an overt peacemaker. This shift could restore some measure of respectability to its narrative of solidarity.
Concurrently, Pakistan might undertake confidence-building measures on the humanitarian front. By extending land corridors for the delivery of Iranian-origin medical and food shipments, particularly to populations affected by US sanctions, Islamabad could demonstrate genuine solidarity in ways that directly benefit ordinary Iranians, rather than through abstract condemnations in New York. This gesture, while modest in economic cost, would carry substantial symbolic weight, signaling that Pakistan’s commitments extend beyond diplomatic posturing to tangible assistance.
Yet such overtures would not come without risk. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies may view Pakistan’s engagement with Tehran as a tilt away from their strategic interests. China, too, while supportive of Pakistani mediation, would be wary of any perception that its flagship CPEC project is being leveraged to curry favor with Iran at the expense of Gulf investment. Moreover, the United States could perceive Pakistan’s shift toward mediation as an abdication of its counter-terrorism support, potentially prompting a recalibration of bilateral security cooperation.
These contradictions exemplify the broader challenge confronting middle powers in an increasingly polarized international order. Pakistan’s predicament underscores the limits of binary paradigms of solidarity versus betrayal: in a world where strategic interdependence binds erstwhile adversaries together, moral postures must often coexist uneasily with concrete security needs. Yet the potency of perceived betrayal can be as corrosive as the imperatives of realpolitik.
Suppose Pakistan allows its solidarity narrative to suffer irreversible damage. In that case, it risks marginalization within the Islamic world, a realm in which it has long sought leadership, and may endanger the very security partnerships it regards as essential.
Ultimately, Pakistan’s path forward will hinge on its capacity to integrate principles into practice without sacrificing pragmatism. By coupling mediation initiatives with tangible humanitarian measures, Islamabad can strive to repair ruptures with Tehran while preserving core security ties to Washington. Success in this endeavor would not only reaffirm Pakistan’s credibility as a defender of Muslim interests but also bolster its strategic standing as an indispensable interlocutor among competing powers.
Conversely, failure to effect such a recalibration may consign Pakistan to a fate of perpetual reproach: accused by hard-liners of betraying the ummah yet regarded by strategic partners as an unreliable ally. In this fraught landscape, Pakistan must demonstrate that solidarity and strategic necessity need not be mutually exclusive but can, with deft statesmanship, become mutually reinforcing pillars of national policy.
About the Authors: Sania Muneer and Saroj Aryal
Sania Muneer is a postdoctoral fellow at SOAS University of London. Her major works are on government and politics, minority rights, implementing blasphemy laws, and pro-women legislation. She worked as an Assistant Professor at the School of Integrated Social Sciences, University of Lahore. She holds her Ph.D. degree in social sciences and a split degree from Royal Holloway University of London.
Saroj Aryal is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw. His expertise includes small states in international affairs, regional security dynamics in South Asia—particularly India-China relations, India’s foreign policy, area studies, and regional security complexities. He teaches courses aligned with his research areas and has published numerous scholarly articles. His two monographs, India and Central Asia in the Post-Cold War Era: Security, Economic and Socio-Cultural Dimensions and Nepal and Major Powers in the Himalayas: Small State in International Affairs, are published by Routledge. He is a recipient of the ‘Young Scientist Award’ presented by the Ministry of Higher Education of Poland and nominated for the best researcher for the Prime Minister Award in the category of International Relations Discipline. He is a visiting scholar at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific of the Australian National University.
Image Credit: Shutterstock/Asianet-Pakistan.
