On 23 June 2026, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian landed at Nur Khan Airbase in Rawalpindi, received by Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. It was Pezeshkian’s first overseas trip since the United States and Israeli strikes on Iran began on 28 February, and it came one day after the high-level United States-Iran talks at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland. Over the course of the visit he met Field Marshal Asim Munir, Senate Chairman Yousaf Raza Gilani, National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi. The two governments discussed bilateral trade, with a stated target of raising annual trade to ten billion dollars from roughly three billion, alongside energy cooperation, border security, and regional connectivity.
The visit’s stated purpose was to thank Pakistan for its mediation and to advance the implementation of the framework deal, which is now widely referred to as the Islamabad Memorandum. That name is worth dwelling on. The deal was negotiated in part in Islamabad, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, signed electronically, and given a formal gathering at a Swiss resort. Of all those places, it carries the name of the mediator’s capital. The Iranian government said that “Pakistan’s commitment to achieving an agreement and promoting regional peace had been instrumental in bringing the process to fruition.” This post reads what the Islamabad Memorandum, and Pezeshkian’s visit to honour it, tell us about the institutional question at the centre of this site’s work.
From mediator to guarantor
The post on Pakistan as mediator, written in early May, set out why Pakistan was structurally suited to the role: a major Hormuz-dependent oil importer, a state sharing a long land border with Iran, a recognised diplomatic bridge with working relationships across the United States, the Gulf, and Tehran. At that point Pakistan was carrying messages. Pezeshkian’s visit marks a different stage. Pakistan is no longer only the channel through which the parties spoke; it is becoming the guarantor whose continued engagement is meant to hold the deal together through its sixty-day implementation. The mediator has become a stakeholder in the outcome.
This is a natural and in many ways constructive evolution. A deal needs someone invested in its survival, and Pakistan, having staked its diplomatic reputation on the Islamabad Memorandum, now has a strong interest in seeing it implemented rather than collapsing. The high-level committee the Bürgenstock talks established, the deconfliction cell for Lebanon, and the communication line for the Strait of Hormuz all benefit from a mediator that remains engaged and motivated. Pezeshkian’s visit is, in part, the cultivation of that continued engagement, converting a successful mediation into a durable regional partnership.
The limits of a guarantee carried by a name
But a memorandum named for a mediator’s capital is still not an institution, and the distinction matters for the strait. Pakistan’s role, however valuable, is diplomatic and personal rather than institutional and standing. It rests on the relationships of particular leaders, the credibility of particular mediators, and the political will of a particular government at a particular moment. The May post made this point about mediation generally, and it applies with equal force to guarantee: Pakistan can carry the deal as long as Pakistan chooses to, and its capacity to do so depends on the durability of its own relationships with both Tehran and Washington.
The Strait of Hormuz needs something Pakistan cannot provide, no matter how committed. It needs a standing institution that operates the waterway regardless of which leaders are in office and which mediators are engaged. Pakistan can help the parties reach an agreement about the strait, and can help hold them to it, but Pakistan cannot be the body that schedules the transits, certifies the safety, collects the service fees, and publishes the authoritative status. That body has to be constituted by the riparian states under international law, as the post on the deal’s text set out. The Islamabad Memorandum is the diplomatic achievement; the institution it should give rise to is the work that follows, and Pakistan’s name on the memorandum does not substitute for it.
Pakistan’s place in the strait’s future
There is, however, a real institutional role for Pakistan in the strait’s future, and Pezeshkian’s visit gestures toward it. Pakistan is one of the major user-states of the Strait of Hormuz, importing the bulk of its crude through the waterway. In the cooperative model of chokepoint governance that this site has argued fits the two-bank Hormuz geography, the model of the Strait of Malacca arrangement among Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, the user-states are not bystanders. They contribute to the cost of navigational safety and they hold a stake in the governance. Pakistan, as both a major user and the deal’s mediator, is a natural participant in the user-state circle of any future Hormuz authority.
The post on the Iran-Oman joint administration noted that the deal delegates the strait’s future administration to Iran and Oman in discussion with the other Gulf littoral states. Pakistan sits just outside that riparian circle, but squarely inside the user-state circle that a durable arrangement would need to incorporate. The Pezeshkian visit, with its emphasis on energy cooperation and regional connectivity, is consistent with Pakistan seeking exactly that kind of standing role, converting its episodic mediation into a permanent seat at the table of the strait’s governance. If the sixty-day dialogue produces a genuine institution, Pakistan’s natural place in it is as a contributing user-state, and the relationships cultivated during this visit would carry into that role.
The deal’s name and the deal’s substance
The Islamabad Memorandum is named for the place where the trust was built, not the place where the document was signed, and that is fitting, because the substance of the achievement was trust-building rather than text. The Middle East analyst Reza Khanzadeh observed that “Iran is engaging from a position of sovereignty, with regional partners, and not simply responding to American pressure,” and the choice to honour Islamabad rather than Geneva or Bürgenstock reflects Iran’s framing of the deal as one brokered among regional partners rather than imposed by Washington. The visit serves that framing: Pezeshkian travels to thank a regional partner, not to report to a superpower.
For the strait, the lesson is the one this site has drawn throughout. Diplomacy can produce an agreement, and a committed mediator can help it hold, but the chokepoint needs an institution, and an institution is a different kind of thing from a memorandum, however well named. The Islamabad Memorandum is a genuine and welcome diplomatic achievement, and Pakistan’s role in it deserves the recognition Pezeshkian travelled to give. The next step, the one the memorandum points toward but does not itself accomplish, is to convert the diplomatic trust that Islamabad built into the standing institution that the strait requires. The comparison page sets out that institution. The rate schedule sets out the service fee it would charge. The calculator prices a transit against it. Pakistan helped end the war; the institution is what would keep the strait open after the mediators go home.
Sources: Arab News, “Iranian president lands in Pakistan, visit to advance Islamabad Memorandum implementation,” 23 June 2026; Arab News, “Iranian president due in Pakistan today to discuss engagements after US-Iran deal”; Al Jazeera, “Why Iran’s President Pezeshkian is heading to Pakistan after US talks,” 23 June 2026; The National Desk and Washington Times reporting on the 23 June visit; statements by the Iranian government and analyst Reza Khanzadeh; this site’s prior analyses on Pakistan as mediator (6 May), the Iran-Oman joint administration (16 June), and the deal’s no-toll text (22 June).