Iran fired at Pakistan. Pakistan shot back. Can trust be rebuilt?

After a week of hostility, including missile exchanges, there are welcome signs of a rapprochement between Iran and Pakistan. The two Muslim countries issued a joint statement yesterday announcing that the Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, would visit Islamabad next week, and that the ambassadors of both countries would “return to their respective posts” by Jan. 26. 

The statement marks the end of a diplomatic crisis that began last Tuesday, when Iran launched an unexpected missile and drone attack that killed at least two children in Pakistan’s sparsely populated Balochistan province. Iranian officials claimed that the operation was aimed at neutralizing members of the obscure militant outfit Jaish al-Adl, which Iran holds responsible for past attacks on its side of the border. 

Commentators in Pakistan, however, remain skeptical about this explanation. “I think that it was a blunder from sections of the Iranian deep state who tend to be trigger-happy,” says Mushahid Hussain Syed, a Pakistani senator and foreign policy expert, noting that Iran is facing domestic pressure over recent security breaches inside its territory, as well as pressure from the United States and Israel over its support of Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen.

These circumstances, according to Mr. Syed, led Tehran “to send a robust message that ‘look, we’ll not be trifled with.’”

The cost of that message was Pakistan’s trust. 

“Although the two neighbors have sought to quickly reengage and de-escalate tensions, the relationship has been damaged,” says Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s former permanent representative to the United Nations. 

To repair it, she argues that Iran will need to “check smuggling and cross-border terrorism,” with a particular focus on ensuring that “Baloch militants don’t have a sanctuary in Iran’s border areas.”

Iran’s muddy motives

“People are having trouble figuring out what exactly was the motive for Iran to do this,” says political commentator Mosharraf Zaidi, who served as a policy adviser at Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2011 to 2013. “The only plausible explanation that I’ve been able to manufacture for myself is the ability of Iran to signal to other actors, specifically the U.S. and Western actors, possibly Israel, that Iran is not afraid of escalating ... so beware.”

Where many believe Iran miscalculated was in its failure to anticipate the speed of the response. Within 48 hours of the initial attack, Pakistan fired at a village in the Sistan and Baluchestan province of Iran, with Iranian media reporting the deaths of nine people, including four children.

“Pakistan’s pushback has shown Iran the limits of its power and its strategy of calculated chaos in the greater Middle East,” says former Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani, who is currently a scholar at Washington’s Hudson Institute and the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

The Pakistan-Iran border, according to officials from both sides, is home to a number of separatist groups made up of ethnic Baloch fighters who operate in both countries as part of a long-running insurgency. The fact that these groups pose a common threat to Iran and Pakistan has left many perplexed by Tehran’s choice to take unilateral action. 

“There is a security agreement in place between the two states, so why was that not operationalized?” asks Shireen Mazari, a foreign policy analyst and former minister for human rights.

For many in Pakistan, the unprovoked nature of the attack gave Islamabad no choice but to establish deterrence. It is “inexplicable why Iran behaved in such a reckless manner destroying goodwill in Pakistan, which had strengthened because of Iran’s position on Gaza,” says Dr. Mazari. “Pakistan gave a sensible response showing clearly that it can respond and prevail militarily.”

Restoring trust and security

The effectiveness of the military response notwithstanding, these tit-for-tat operations have left Pakistan on bad footing with three of its four neighbors. Only relations with China – which shares a short, 370-mile border with Pakistan – are stable. Pakistan’s relationship with India remains perennially troubled, principally because of the unresolved territorial dispute over Kashmir. More recently, Islamabad has also witnessed a souring of relations with Kabul, which it blames for protecting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group that regularly carries out suicide attacks along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

“The expectation in Pakistan was that with the return of the Taliban, the Pakistani relationship with Kabul would improve,” says national security expert Syed Rifaat Hussain. “But unfortunately, the spate of TTP-led attacks against security forces in Pakistan has defied that expectation.”

Now with the opening of a hostile theater with Iran, there is a sense in some quarters that Pakistan needs a strategic reset. 

Mr. Syed argues that the only way for Pakistan to establish trust with its neighbors is through economic cooperation. “If our neighbors will have a strategic stake in our economic development ... I think then the issues of proxy wars and nonstate actors will be subordinated to the larger geoeconomic interest,” he says. 

Others believe that Pakistan’s neighbors must shoulder the bulk of the blame. Mr. Zaidi, the political commentator, notes that Iran, India, and Afghanistan each deal with more border problems than Pakistan. 

“I absolutely reject the idea that Pakistan’s disputes and issues with these three countries are entirely a product of Pakistani mistakes,” he says. “Those are three sovereign countries that make choices. Iran made a choice to attack Pakistan, Afghanistan every day makes a choice to support the TTP, and India has occupied Kashmir for over 70 years and continues to do so.”