Pakistan has spent decades cultivating a unique position in the region: indispensable enough to be consulted, strategically important enough to be funded, and sufficiently connected with the competing actors to present itself as the country capable of talking to everyone.
It is a powerful diplomatic business model but it also creates a dangerous incentive. The more indispensable it becomes, the greater its leverage over the party that depends upon it.
That is what Washington repeatedly failed to understand throughout its engagements with Pakistan in the case of Afghanistan and now Iran.
Pakistan did not need to openly betray Washington to undermine its objectives. It only needed to pursue its own interests while Washington assumed the two were naturally aligned, but that is not what Pakistan was thinking. The pattern started during the Soviet-Afghan War, when through Operation Cyclone, Washington provided billions of dollars to the Mujahideen, with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) serving as the principal conduit for much of the assistance. The arrangement gave Pakistan enormous influence over the Afghan and non-Afghan factions receiving American and international support.
When Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, Washington largely moved on but Pakistan did not and instead it preserved the influence it had accumulated and used it to pursue its concept of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. Its support for favored Afghan and non-Afghan factions contributed to the instability and civil war that followed, helping create the conditions in which the Taliban, Pakistan's strategic creation, seized Kabul in 1996.
Pakistan helped turn Afghanistan into a permissive environment for the Taliban, warlords, and transnational jihadist organizations, including al-Qaeda, while seeking to manage and manipulate these actors much like a chess master controlling individual pieces and anticipating each move.
The consequences of this strategy eventually reached the United States in the form of the September 11 attacks. Washington did not connect the pattern to its source.
At the same time, Pakistan continued developing its nuclear program despite sustained Washington pressure. In May 1998, Pakistan conducted its first nuclear weapons tests, formally entering the ranks of declared nuclear-armed states. Its nuclear program also had a history of cooperation and alleged proliferation links with Iran. Much of this unfolded under Washington's watch, and had every dollar and channel of financing behind Pakistan's nuclear program been fully traced, the uncomfortable question would remain: to what extent did money originating from, or indirectly enabled by, the United States ultimately help sustain a program Washington had sought to contain?
After September 11, Washington once again turned to Pakistan to dismantle the very same militant infrastructure Pakistan had helped build and had long operated in the shadows. In 2004, Pakistan was designated a major Non-NATO ally, and was provided roughly $33 billion in direct economic and security assistance between 2002 and 2018, according to Congressional Research Service data, including approximately $14.5 billion in Coalition Support Funds.
The expectation was straightforward: Pakistan would help defeat the militant networks and Taliban threatening the United States and its forces in Afghanistan, but Pakistan's interests did not always coincide with Washington's.
Taliban leaders and other militant organizations maintained longstanding relationships and sanctuary in Pakistan, according to U.S. assessments and extensive reporting. The Haqqani network was among the most prominent examples. America was fighting an insurgency inside Afghanistan while important elements of that insurgency operated from across the border.
Then came Abbottabad in 2011. Osama bin Laden was found living in Pakistan, just a short distance from a major Pakistani military facility. The United States ultimately carried out the operation that killed him without relying on Pakistan to execute it. This time, Washington drew a harder line, at least temporarily; aid was suspended and the relationship soured for a period. But the underlying arrangement, dependence without alignment, was never actually renegotiated.
The episode exposed a contradiction that Washington could never fully resolve: how could the world's most wanted terrorist live for years in Pakistan without being detected, or at least prevented from operating, by one of the region's most powerful security establishments?
The problem was no longer simply mistrust but rather control as Pakistan was officially an American ally while maintaining relationships with actors Washington was fighting, including the Taliban and, most controversially, the broader militant ecosystem surrounding al-Qaeda.
Twenty years later, Afghanistan delivered the final warning.
Pakistan had spent decades cultivating relationships with the Taliban and maintaining influence across Afghan political and militant networks. When the Afghan government collapsed in 2021, the Taliban swept into Kabul with astonishing speed. The Afghan state and security forces that Washington had spent two decades building disintegrated within weeks. The United States completed its withdrawal amid chaos at Hamid Karzai International Airport.
For Washington, the collapse became one of the most damaging episodes of its foreign policy. For Pakistan, however, the Taliban's return represented the return to power of an actor it had cultivated and supported for decades. Washington still had not learned the lesson.
That contrast exposed the fundamental danger of outsourcing regional strategy to a partner whose objectives are not identical to America's. Washington had assumed partnership meant alignment. Pakistan understood partnership as an opportunity to advance Pakistan's interests. Those are not the same thing.
And now, Iran.
That same problem may now be emerging in Iran's case. In recent months, Pakistan has presented itself as a key intermediary in efforts to communicate and negotiate with Tehran, readily embracing the role of regional bridge.
But Pakistan is not a neutral broker. It has its own economic, security, and geopolitical interests, much as it has in Afghanistan, and those interests inevitably shape how it approaches any mediation effort.
Pakistan has reportedly sought as much as $10 billion in economic and strategic benefits in connection with its mediation role, according to regional reporting on the talks. Whether that figure ultimately becomes a formal arrangement or remains a negotiating demand, the underlying dynamic is difficult to ignore: Pakistan expects to extract value from the leverage created by its access to both sides.
That should make Washington cautious.
The critical question is not whether Pakistan can carry messages between Washington and Tehran. It can. The question is whether Pakistan can, and genuinely wants to, produce an outcome that serves American interests.
So far, the evidence is inconclusive at best. Diplomatic understandings may exist, but they have not produced a durable resolution. The confrontation remains unresolved and the fighting continues.
That exposes the difference between access and influence. A country can communicate with both sides without controlling either side. It can facilitate negotiations without being neutral, and it can benefit from remaining indispensable even when a conflict remains unresolved.
The lesson from Afghanistan is therefore not that Pakistan should never be engaged. Pakistan is too strategically important to simply ignore. The lesson is that Washington should never confuse dependence with partnership, access with influence, or mediation with alignment.
