In the summer of 2006, a forwarded email asked me to vote on a CNN poll about the Israeli military response inside Lebanon. Exhausted, I clicked “NO” without reading the article. Hours later, I read it and found a tangled knot of sovereignty, proxy warfare, and political theology. That night, I wrote “Clickers and Voters” for The Movement for a Tolerant World, which I co-founded with Levi Brackman. In 2007, we designed the Religious Pluralism and New Media Project with Dr Lynn Schofield Clark, Dr Heidi Campbell, and Dr Mia Lovheim. It was planned but never executed, yet its thinking shaped what followed.
In that same period, I argued a point many were unwilling to hear: a collapse of the Iranian regime would change nothing. The network holding Hezbollah and the Shia militias is older than 1979, rooted in the doctrine of vilayat-e-faqih, with funding through the khums system that bypasses any state treasury. Even if the regime fell, the network would find the next jurisprudent. In 2026, this was tested at enormous cost. The regime consolidated. The network endured. In my 2005 research for St Andrews and Professor Paul Wilkinson, I described terrorism as a parasitic phenomenon. It attaches to organised crime, feeds on bad governance, and grows where the state has failed. It keeps happening because we treat symptoms and ignore the organism.
The Strait of Hormuz will reopen, conditionally at first, then unconditionally, because neither Iran nor the Gulf nor China can afford its closure.
Inside the 2006 Lebanon war was Suhaila, an Emirati criminal lawyer of more than three decades, who left on an embassy evacuation bus without a phone, cut off from everyone she loved. Explosions destroyed vehicles ahead of her. She crossed between Lebanon and Syria more than once. She remembers that every time she was about to board a car or bus, something told her to let someone else go first. She stepped back and helped others board instead. Every vehicle she gave up her place on was hit. Everyone who rode died. She survived because she was helping others. It was selflessness, not strategy, that kept her alive. When we spoke about the present crisis, she kept returning to one phrase: “It is all about the Strait of Hormuz.” That became the spine of my Daily Times Pakistan article of March 10, 2026.
The UAE has since intercepted more than 2,500 aerial threats with a success rate above 95 per cent. Mr Yousaf, an Emirati voice, puts it simply: this is decades of investment in defence, diversification, and cohesion paying off. Amna Waheed, a great entrepreneur living in the UAE from Pakistan and a great political analyst, said it plainly: “If the UAE calls Iran, things will change.” On April 15, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan called Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf to discuss de-escalation and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The UAE model is what President Xi Jinping proposed on April 14: peaceful coexistence, sovereignty, rule of law, and the coordination of development with security.
I want to say this with the respect due to President Trump. The theory he was presented with, largely by Prime Minister Netanyahu, was painless regime change through decapitation. The February 28 strikes killed Supreme Leader Khamenei, but the regime consolidated under Mojtaba Khamenei. The flaw was in the theory, not in his instincts. What matters is how sharply President Trump has pivoted. The Islamabad talks progressed substantively, with agreement in principle on reopening the Strait and a moratorium on enrichment. The second round will be decisive and favourable to all. Pressure and diplomacy in parallel is the mark of a sharp-minded negotiator. President Trump is coming back as a peacemaker.
Pakistan’s hybrid regime under Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir handled this moment remarkably well. He affirmed in Abu Dhabi on February 16 that UAE security is an integral part of Pakistan’s own security. That was a doctrine, not a gesture. Pakistan holds a defence treaty with Saudi Arabia, a working relationship with Iran, deep ties to the UAE, and strategic communication with China. It can carry messages no one else can. The World Bank has already recognised this convergence, reclassifying Pakistan from South Asia into the newly designated MENAAP region for fiscal year 2026, with a regional hub in Riyadh. Pakistan is now formally part of the Middle East’s economic architecture, and Field Marshal Munir’s doctrine is the security expression of what the World Bank has acknowledged in economic terms.
What I call the Covenant Framework, proposed in my forthcoming book with Suhaila as co-author, rests on four pillars: coexistence under autonomous law, a common security architecture as both the UAE and China propose, economic instruments rather than war to resolve grievances, and empowering mediators who can speak to all sides. A treaty is signed when parties agree they cannot destroy each other. A covenant is signed when they agree they do not want to.
Forthcoming book: A Common Word, Not a Common Faith: Islamic Scholarship in Dialogue with Adib Saab, Revelation, Law, and the Foundations of Comparative Religion by Imran Aziz (author) and Suhaila (co-author). The Covenant Framework is proposed in this book.
Based on two decades of research, the most probable outcome is this. The second round of Islamabad talks will produce a framework agreement. Iran will accept a moratorium on enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief and an economic package. The Strait of Hormuz will reopen, conditionally at first, then unconditionally, because neither Iran nor the Gulf nor China can afford its closure. Hezbollah will be contained gradually through Lebanese sovereignty, backed by economic incentives, not foreign bombs. The UAE will emerge stronger, its model validated. President Trump will sign a deal he can call a victory, and it will be one, because ending a war is always a victory. The Covenant Framework will move from a research paper into a living conversation. The new world order has already quietly begun. What remains is for enough people to notice.
The writer is a freelance columnist.