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Iranian President Pezeshkian landed in Rawalpindi on 23 June, his first trip abroad since the war began, to thank Pakistan and advance the deal now named the Islamabad Memorandum. Pakistan has moved from mediator to guarantor. But a memorandum named for the mediator’s capital is still not an institution, and the strait needs the latter. This post reads Pakistan’s elevation, the limits of a guarantee carried by a name, and Pakistan’s natural place as a user-state in any future Hormuz authority.

Pakistan brokered the 8 April ceasefire, hosted the Islamabad Talks of 10-11 April, and now carries the 14-point Iranian proposal and the United States response between Tehran and Washington. Pakistan also imports more than 85% of its crude through Hormuz. This post reads the mediation as institutional infrastructure of a temporary kind, identifies what the mediation can and cannot do, and explains where Pakistan would sit in any working chokepoint authority.