New Delhi: Be it as mediator or facilitator, Pakistan’s efforts to be a bridge between Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and ally US on one side and the Shia-dominated Iran on the other have always been an unprofitable venture.
On a visit to Iran, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Sunday he is visiting the country “not as a mediator but as a facilitator” to establish a dialogue between Tehran and Riyadh.
Khan’s visit to Iran comes within weeks of his trip to the US and days before he travels to Saudi Arabia. “The reason for this trip is that we do not want a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran,” Khan told reporters as he stood alongside Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
But history stands witness to the fact that whenever Pakistan has made such an attempt, it has always fallen flat on its face. The mediation efforts can be traced back to 1971 but they gained more prominence under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf.
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When Yahya Khan got a warning
Right since former Pakistan president Yahya Khan’s visit to Iran in 1971, which was then under the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Islamabad has never left any stone unturned to strike a truce between Riyadh and Tehran and thereby soothe American nerves.
Yahya Khan’s visit to Iran could not achieve much as the Shah was not quite happy with the former’s attitude towards East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. In fact, he had warned Yahya Khan that if Pakistan is further broken down, Tehran would annex Balochistan, according to the book Iran and Pakistan: Security, Diplomacy and American Influence, by Iran expert and author Alex Vatanka.
The main issue of conflict in the Persian Gulf has always been the tussle between Shia-dominated Iran and the Sunni-ruled Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which promotes Wahhabism — a radical sect of Islam.
In 1980, when the then Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq visited Tehran, his main objective was to lead an Islamic “peace mission” to bring an end to the eight-year-long Iraq-Iran war, which was essentially a sectarian war. The war went on till 1988.
Saudi Arabia was an ally of Iraq, then led by Sunni leader Saddam Hussein, in the war, along with the US.
However, all his attempts to bring peace fell apart as Iran rejected the offer.
“For decades, Pakistan has hewed closer to Saudi Arabia than to Iran, but successive Pakistani civilian and military leaders have pursued a more even-keeled foreign policy to avoid being perceived as pro-Saudi and anti-Iranian,” the United States Institute of Peace, a government-owned thinktank, said in a February 2019 report.
Bhutto, Sharif, Musharraf
Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif also contributed towards this effort to a large extent. Sharif is the only Pakistani leader who has visited Tehran thrice, in 1992, 1997 and 2016.
In 1992 and 1997, the main objective behind Sharif’s visit to Iran was to strengthen the relationship between Islamabad and Tehran in the backdrop of the growing influence of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the turmoil then underway in Afghanistan.
However, it was in 2016 that Sharif spoke about “mediation” between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
During the trip, Sharif said Pakistan will appoint a pointperson on the Saudi-Iran issue, and that Riyadh and Tehran are brotherly countries.
Pakistan army chief Raheel Sharif (no relation of the former PM) was in tow, in a bid to defuse tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran that escalated after the hanging of a Shia cleric by Riyadh.
After he was deposed by former Pakistani army chief Musharraf in a coup in 1999, Sharif also spent several years of his exile in Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan developed close ties with Saudi Arabia and Iran particularly after the Islamic Revolution and the overthrow of Tehran’s Shah regime, which was close to the western countries. However, with the fall of the Shah in 1979, the US’ influence in Iran also declined rapidly. Hence, Washington started to rely increasingly on Pakistan to assert its influence on the Persian Gulf.
Zulfikar’s daughter and Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto called Iran “a friend, a neighbour and a brother in Islam” when she made a state visit there in 1995 amid tightening US sanctions on Tehran.
She met the then Iranian president Hafshemi Rafsanjani, and even agreed to an energy-sharing pact that was later followed up by Sharif.
When Benazir was assassinated in 2007, Iran expressed tremendous grief.
Her legacy was carried on by her husband and former Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari when he met former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2011.
In order to further the energy pact between Iran and Pakistan that Benazir had initiated, Zardari also discussed a gas pipeline between the two neighbouring nations.
This is the main reason Zardari visited Iran just months after US forces killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, looking for a friend amid soaring tensions with Washington. But Zardari could never enter the good books of the kingdom, possibly because of his likely Shia roots (it remains contested topic whether Zardari is a Shia or a Sunni).
The then Pakistani ambassador to Riyadh, Umar Khan Alisherzai, once stated that the Saudi had a distrust towards Zardari for being a Shia and preferred Musharraf over him.
Zardari visited Iran once more in 2013, but could not cut much ice with Tehran even as he was warned to move on the $7.5 billion gas pipeline project despite the stiff American sanctions on the west Asian nation.
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Neutral on Yemen
Former Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Raza Gillani had joined hands with their much-richer ally Saudi Arabia in curbing Iran’s power and influence in the region.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also heavily invested in Pakistan’s nuclear programme and there is a tacit understanding between the two that should there be a situation where the Saudis face a security crisis, it can seek Islamabad’s assistance.
Gary Samore, a former adviser to US President Barack Obama on arms control, stated in 2013 that the possibility of Pakistani nuclear forces being placed in Saudi Arabia could not be ruled out.
Musharraf tasted defeat when he wanted to bring about a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
In 2003-04, Musharraf made an all-out effort to bring Tehran and Riyadh closer but he could not achieve much as he was seen as “too close to the US”.
In a March 2017 interview, Musharraf said Pakistan had to “play a role to bring solidarity among the Muslim world”, and that tensions between Riyadh and Tehran created issues for Pakistan as it has the second-largest population of Shias after Iran.
However, Pakistan has not supported Saudi Arabia’s offensive against Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen. In April 2015, it effectively rejected Saudi requests for troops, equipment and supplies for the Yemen theatre when its parliament voted to maintain neutrality.
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