Congress leader Jairam Ramesh sharpened the opposition’s attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, arguing that Washington’s decision to give Islamabad a central role in mediation between the United States and Iran exposed a gap in New Delhi’s regional diplomacy at a moment of heightened tension across West Asia. His criticism came as US Vice President JD Vance travelled to Pakistan’s capital for high-level talks with an Iranian delegation aimed at preserving a fragile ceasefire and testing whether a wider diplomatic process could take shape. The row erupted against the backdrop of one of the most sensitive diplomatic episodes in the region this year. Islamabad hosted the first direct US-Iran meeting in more than a decade, according to Reuters, with Vance leading the American side and senior Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, taking part. The talks followed a two-week ceasefire agreed on Tuesday after a conflict that began on February 28 with US and Israeli air strikes on Iran and went on to disrupt oil flows and lift pressure on global energy markets.
Ramesh’s intervention was politically pointed because it sought to turn a foreign-policy development into a domestic argument over influence. By questioning why Pakistan, rather than New Delhi, had emerged as a diplomatic channel acceptable to both Washington and Tehran, the Congress leader implicitly challenged the government’s claim that Modi’s personal diplomacy has expanded the country’s reach in major international crises. The criticism also drew force from the symbolism of the venue: Islamabad was not merely passing messages but hosting direct negotiations involving the US vice president.
Pakistan’s role did not emerge overnight. Reuters reported earlier this week that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had appealed for a two-week ceasefire and urged both sides to create space for diplomacy, while officials in Islamabad acted as the main go-between for proposals exchanged between Tehran and Washington. On April 8, Sharif’s office said President Masoud Pezeshkian had confirmed Iran’s participation in negotiations in Islamabad, underscoring how Pakistan had moved from back-channel facilitator to public host of a high-stakes encounter.
By the time Vance arrived, Islamabad had been placed under extraordinary security. Shops and offices were shut, roads sealed and thousands of security personnel deployed around the Serena Hotel, where the delegations met. The scale of the lockdown reflected both the importance of the talks and the risks attached to Pakistan’s attempt to convert a wartime opening into diplomatic capital. Analysts cited by Reuters said the effort could raise Pakistan’s international standing if it succeeded, but failure carried reputational costs because Islamabad’s leverage over the core disputes remained limited.
Those limits became clear when the negotiations ended without an agreement. Vance said the United States had insisted on an affirmative Iranian commitment not to seek nuclear weapons or the capability to obtain them quickly. Iranian media, meanwhile, described US demands as excessive and indicated that the main sticking points included the nuclear file and the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran was also seeking wider ceasefire terms, including in Lebanon, alongside reparations and control-related demands linked to the waterway. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar responded by urging both sides to honour the ceasefire despite the impasse.
That leaves New Delhi facing an awkward political moment, even if the diplomatic picture is more complicated than opposition rhetoric suggests. Pakistan’s emergence as mediator does not automatically mean a strategic eclipse for India, whose ties with Washington, the Gulf monarchies and Israel remain substantial. Yet optics matter in politics and diplomacy alike. Islamabad’s ability to convene American and Iranian principals at a time of war handed Congress an opening to argue that visibility and access in one of the world’s most combustible theatres had shifted, at least for now.