US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Gulf tour has underscored how, while negotiating with Tehran, Washington, DC, is just as busy trying to convince Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Manama, Kuwait and Muscat that the bargain will not be struck over Arab heads. Rubio’s message to the GCC capitals was deliberately precise: any final agreement must protect America’s Gulf allies, and no country should be allowed to turn international waterways into a toll gate. The warning was directed at Tehran, but its real audience was the Gulf, where governments that backed Washington during the war now want to know about their own security and sovereignty.
The resumption of quiet confidence-building contacts between Iran and several Gulf states, meanwhile, shows that regional capitals are not waiting passively for Washington’s assurances. Pakistan enters this moment as a country that has suddenly become useful, and Islamabad must now decide whether it will convert that usefulness into leverage or waste it on another round of diplomatic self-congratulation. Its channels with Tehran, access in Washington, credibility in the Gulf and direct stake in keeping Hormuz open have placed it in a conversation larger than South Asia. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s claim that Pakistan is now being recognised as a peacemaker and a middle power captures that opening, but the test is whether the foreign policy establishment can turn it into concessions on finance, energy and trade rather than once again mistaking diplomatic applause for a change in national fortunes.
Some benefits already appear to have surfaced at the edges. It would be reckless to claim that Washington simply instructed the IMF to soften its view and clear the way for $1 billion under the Extended Fund Facility and $210 million under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility, but it would be equally naïve to pretend that geopolitics does not shape the climate in which multilateral finance is negotiated. Oil is the more immediate channel, because Pakistan spends nearly one-fourth of its import bill on petroleum. The return of oil flows towards normal has given the government some fiscal breathing space, reminding policymakers that Middle Eastern stability is not a foreign affairs luxury for Pakistan. The larger dividend, however, remains uncollected. Pakistan-Iran trade is still around $3 billion, and the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline remains trapped between sanctions and political hesitation. The old RCD imagination– Pakistan, Iran and Turkey connected by road and trade–still makes strategic sense. What remains embarrassing is our refusal to summon the political will needed to turn that sense into policy. If Washington is now trying to reassure the Gulf, Islamabad also has space to argue for sanctions clarity, border trade facilitation, energy exceptions and corridor economics.
Still, leverage, no matter how rare, disappears when a state does not know what to do with it. Pakistan’s trade deficit widened to $34 billion in the first eleven months of FY26. Remittances of $38 billion may have protected the external account, but remittances are not an industrial policy, and workers abroad cannot permanently compensate for exports that remain too weak. *