After talks in Tehran, Pakistan military ‘cautiously optimistic’ on US-Iran mediation

Pakistan’s military is “cautiously optimistic” about its mediation between Iran and the United States, its spokesman said on Friday in his first interview since a high-level delegation visited Tehran this week.

Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir — Pakistan’s chief mediator in its efforts to de-escalate the now eight-month-old Iran war — has been to Tehran twice this month, most recently on Monday alongside Saudi and Turkish officials.

“Why would the Field Marshal be going twice if it is not for some positivity? So yes, of course,” spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said when asked whether the trips were a positive sign.

US President Donald Trump meanwhile said Friday that Iran wants to keep holding negotiations, claiming that the US “has time” to do so.

“There are talks, they want to talk, they keep talking,” he told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the negotiations. “We have time, frankly.”

He asserted that the war with Iran is “not a typical war” and was not costing US taxpayers much money, claiming that any money spent “we made up for in Venezuela like by 10 times.”

“I spent a lot of money in order to get rid of a nuclear weapon, which we’ve done,” he insisted.

Pact does not bar new members

Speaking in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Pakistan’s armed forces are headquartered, Chaudhry declined to say what was discussed in Tehran or whether the United States had backed the trip.

“The word that we would use is always cautiously optimistic,” added Chaudhry, director general of Inter-Services Public Relations.

There were still “powerful spoilers and detractors,” who believed conflict serves them, he added without naming them.

Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin joined Munir in Tehran on Monday.

Their two countries signed a joint defense pact with Pakistan on August 7, saying an attack on any signatory will be treated as an attack on all.

The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement has taken on added significance as the Iran war has redrawn regional alliances and raised fears of a broader Middle East conflict.

While the three signatories say the agreement is aimed at collective deterrence and regional security, analysts see its evolution as closely tied to efforts by regional powers to manage the fallout from the Iran-US confrontation.

After Monday’s talks, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said regional security should be ensured by regional countries without foreign intervention.

The wording of the pact does not bar new members, Chaudhry said on Friday when asked whether Iran could join.

“Anyone who has a shared vision of collective deterrence and regional peace, why not? Everyone is most welcome,” he said, adding that it was for the political leadership of the three principal parties to decide.

Asked whether more Pakistani troops were being sent to Saudi Arabia under the agreement, Chaudhry said that would depend on the situation and the decision of both countries’ political leadership.

He said Pakistan was committed to defending Saudi Arabia and the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. “We are not part of the Yemeni conflict, which is an intra-Yemen conflict,” he added.

Fighting between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels has intensified in recent weeks, opening a volatile new front in the wider US-Israel war on Iran.

The United States Embassy in Riyadh on Friday ordered that non-emergency government employees and their family members leave Saudi Arabia due to safety risks, citing Houthi attacks on civilian airports and other critical infrastructure.

US government employees require special authorization to use Saudi airports following recent missile and drone attacks, the embassy stated, warning US citizens of potential further attacks, airspace closures, flight cancellations, and other travel disruptions.

Iran reports four tankers exploded in Strait of Hormuz

Also Friday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy said that four oil tankers had caught fire and exploded in the Strait of Hormuz, while attempting to use what it described as unauthorized routes, Iranian state media reported.

An IRGC Navy statement said one of the tankers, which was carrying 2 million barrels of crude oil, had hit a mine.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the statement.

Separately, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said it had received a report that a vessel was hit by an unknown projectile on its port side about 40 nautical miles (74 km) south of Iran’s Lavan Island, causing a fire onboard. The crew was reported safe, and there was no reported environmental impact, it said.

Lavan Island lies in the Gulf, off Iran’s southern coast. It was not immediately clear whether the vessel cited by the agency was one of the three tankers referred to by the IRGC Navy.

Tensions have persisted in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which around one-fifth of global oil supplies pass, since the US-Israel strikes on Iran at the end of February.

State media said Iranian forces also downed and captured an MQM-170 US drone over Iran’s Qeshm island near the Strait of Hormuz. There was no immediate reaction from the US military and Reuters could not independently verify the report.

Iran also said it had destroyed an unmanned US vessel in the eastern Strait of Hormuz.

But the US military’s Central Command denied this and said in a statement on X: “All US military unmanned surface vessels in the Middle East are accounted for, including a squadron of advanced sea drones on patrol in the Strait of Hormuz.”