Qureshi Sahab

🇵🇰🇺🇸 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

🇵🇰🇺🇸 The cable that toppled a government is finally public. On March 7, 2022, Pakistan's ambassador in Washington sat down with U.S. assistant secretary of state Donald Lu. The message was short and clear, remove Imran Khan through a no-confidence vote and Washington will look the other way. "All will be forgiven," the ambassador later recalled. Thirty three days later, Khan was gone. But this didn't start with that meeting. In June 2021, CIA Director William Burns personally flew to Islamabad to meet Khan. Waited a full day. Khan never showed. Said he'd only speak to his counterpart, meaning Biden, who had been dodging Khan's calls since day one. Burns left with nothing. Weeks later Khan went on record with Axios and just said it out loud, "Absolutely not. There is no way we are going to allow any bases, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan." No diplomatic cushioning, no ambiguity. Washington had its answer. Pakistan's military had seen enough of their own prime minister. In July 2021, behind Khan's back, the military quietly put a former CIA Islamabad station chief on retainer as a lobbyist in Washington. The generals were already cutting their own deal. Then came the moment that sealed it. On February 24, 2022, the exact day Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Khan was in Moscow shaking hands with Putin on a long scheduled visit. Biden's national security advisor Sullivan had personally called Islamabad days before urging them to cancel. Khan didn't budge. Pakistan then abstained on the UN vote condemning the invasion. Washington was done. Weeks later came the Lu meeting. The cable. And then Khan was out. What followed was a gut punch. Artillery shells started flowing to Ukraine secretly through U.S. defense contractors. American support for Pakistan's IMF lifeline was explicitly tied to keeping that weapons pipeline running. Pakistan got its $3 billion bailout in July 2023. In February 2024 the military brazenly rigged the elections and the U.S. and EU sat on their hands and said nothing. And Khan? Buried under a never ending conveyor belt of charges, corruption, contempt, national security, one case collapsing only for another to appear. He has been behind bars for nearly 3 years now. His wife still in prison. His party outlawed, stripped of its electoral symbol, barred from even fielding candidates under its own name. The cypher was always real. They called it fake, jailed the man who leaked it, and hoped everyone would move on. They didn't. Source: Drop Site News