🇵🇰🇸🇦 The pact Khan refused is the one that explains everything.
In 2021, while the CIA was pushing Khan for drone bases and Washington was getting increasingly fed up with Islamabad, Saudi Arabia was also knocking on Pakistan's door for a mutual defence pact. Khan said no to both. He saw them as red lines, commitments that would drag Pakistan into other people's wars and hand away whatever foreign policy independence the country still had.
The military watched him do this and decided he was a problem.
That's what fed into everything that followed. The lobbyist quietly hired behind Khan's back. The generals cutting their own deals. And eventually the cypher, Lu sitting across from Pakistan's ambassador in Washington and saying all will be forgiven if Khan goes. Thirty three days later, Khan was gone.
The first thing Munir did was start saying yes to everything Khan had said no to. The Saudi pact was signed in September 2025, the same pact Khan had been refusing for years. Confidential terms, both sides commit to defend each other if attacked. When asked whether it included nuclear weapons, one official said it was "a comprehensive defensive agreement that encompasses all military means." Make of that what you will.
By the time the Iran war started Pakistan had already moved 8,000 troops, 16 JF-17 jets, 2 drone squadrons and a Chinese HQ-9 air defence system into Saudi Arabia under that pact. Saudis foot the bill, Pakistanis run the gear. The pact allows for up to 80,000 troops if things escalate. All of this happening while Islamabad was busy telling the world it was a neutral peacemaker.
The cypher was never just about Ukraine or Putin. It was about getting rid of a prime minister who kept saying no and replacing him with one who would say yes to everything. The Saudi pact is what that looks like three years later.
Khan is still in a cell. Munir is Trump's favorite Field Marshal. And Saudi Arabia has a nuclear armed ally it could never get while Khan was in charge.
The cable did exactly what it was sent to do.
Source: Drop Site News
🇵🇰🇺🇸 Pakistan's big mediation moment is falling apart in real time.
Sharif said his government was "in seventh heaven and on cloud nine." Sure. The former Pakistani ambassador to Washington said he had never seen Pakistan on such a high pedestal in his entire career. The Western press was writing glowing profiles. Islamabad was loving every second of it.
Worth remembering this is the same government that came to power after a U.S. engineered removal of Imran Khan, documented in a cable they spent years calling fake.
Then it started falling apart.
On the afternoon of April 24, as U.S. markets were closing for the weekend, the ISPR, the military's own media arm, sent a private WhatsApp message to journalists. Attributed to "government sources" to hide the military's fingerprints, it claimed Iranian FM Araghchi was headed to Islamabad for a second round of U.S.-Iran talks and that an American logistics team was already on the ground. The story exploded. Stocks popped. Pakistani mediators basked.
Araghchi never showed up. Trump called the whole thing off. The story collapsed within days and took a chunk of Pakistan's credibility with it.
Tehran had a different take.
A senior Iranian lawmaker went on X and called Pakistan out directly. "Pakistan is a good friend and neighbor but it is not a suitable intermediary and lacks the necessary credibility for mediation." He said Pakistan "always takes Trump's interests into account and does not say a word against the Americans' wishes," then listed the instances where Islamabad had simply rolled over every time Washington pushed. "A mediator must be impartial, not always leaning to one side."
That one stung because it was true.
Oman, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have all quietly started positioning themselves to shape the outcome. Munir's grand Islamabad Accord never happened. The follow up talks both sides cancelled. Lindsey Graham called Pakistan out for double dealing over an Iranian jet.
Trump still says the Pakistanis have been "great." But the room has already moved on and Islamabad is the last to know.
Source: Drop Site News