Asim Munir Will Be the Winner of Any Iran Deal

Confounding skeptics (including this writer), Pakistan’s army chief has made himself the indispensable interlocutor between Washington and Tehran.

Munir of the moment. (Photo: Inter Services Public Relations Pakistan, via Wikimedia Commons)

In this space in late March, I argued that Pakistan could only play the messenger — but not the mediator — in peace negotiations in the war between the United States and Iran. Islamabad, I wrote, lacked the relationships, the credibility, and the trust that genuine mediation requires. Two months on, the belligerents seem on the verge of some kind of breakthrough; to judge by the reports leaking from the White House on Saturday, it seems more likely to be a ceasefire extension than a peace deal. Whatever the arrangement turns out to be, there’s little doubt that it was made possible by Pakistani diplomacy.

I owe my readers an accounting, and here it is: I underestimated Field Marshal Asim Munir. Whatever Pakistan lacked in institutions and credibility, its de facto ruler seems to have made up by the effective use of his connection in the White House and by exerting himself in Tehran.

It helped that Munir had been laying the groundwork for nearly a year before the war. His bromance with Donald Trump was built on flattery (two Nobel Peace Prize nominations), critical minerals (rare earths from Balochistan, presented to Trump in a literal chest at the White House last September), and a deal with the First Family’s crypto venture. By the time the Iran war began in February, Munir had already had an unprecedented one-on-one Cabinet Room lunch with Trump, who anointed him “my favorite Field Marshal.”

The cosy relationship benefited Pakistan, of course: a $500-million investment in mining by an American company may be the first of many to come. “We look forward to seeing future agreements between US companies and their counterparts in the critical minerals and mining sector in Pakistan,” said Natalie Baker, Chargé d’Affaires at the US embassy in Islamabad.

And then there are the benefits to Munir himself. Consider where the Field Marshal stood thirteen months ago. In March 2025, two American congressmen introduced the Pakistan Democracy Act, a bipartisan bill demanding Magnitsky sanctions against him personally for “wrongful persecution and imprisonment of political opponents,” including the jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Munir’s domestic record — the crackdown on Khan’s party, the steady migration of authority from civilian to military hands, the 27th Amendment that created the new Chief of Defense Forces position and locked him in until 2030 — would, in a different American administration, have made him a pariah in Washington.

Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he is “in constant communication” with the Field Marshal. Munir, along with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, have been praised by the President for “very competent leadership.” There seems to be little appetite in Washington for sanctioning him. (When Senator Lindsey Graham declared earlier this month that he does not trust Pakistan “as far as I can throw them,” Trump merely shrugged.)

And there may be a political dividend he can draw at home. In a Carnegie Endowment paper earlier this month, South Asia scholars Zoha Waseem and Yasser Kureshi, noted that Munir is betting that “that international legitimacy can be translated into domestic stability.” That outcome seems the more likely now, with parliament compliant, civil society repressed, courts neutered, the army’s role enlarged and entrenched — and the endorsement of the American President.

Munir can’t afford complacence. Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador to Washington now at the Hudson Institute, has long warned that American attention to Pakistan tends to be transactional and short-lived. With Trump, as I wrote earlier this month, there’s always the risk of relations souring at a moment’s notice. A bromance between leaders is hardly the soundest foundation for long-term bilateral relations.

Besides, the Field Marshal has plenty of unresolved problems at home and in the neighborhood. The Carnegie paper by Waseem and Kureshi points to deeper structural risks, including the unresolved insurgencies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and latent sympathies for Khan inside the army itself. The conflict with Afghanistan is far from over. The Pakistani economy is struggling, and international legitimacy does not feed people or quiet streets.

But Munir is still working the one angle he can. The flurry of reports about an imminent breakthrough came after Munir made his second trip to Tehran in just over a month, to meet Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, President Masoud Pezeshkian, and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Iranian state media reported that the talks ran late into the night.

And if the breakthrough doesn’t materialize — as I write this Trump, stung by widespread criticism of the leaked details of the ceasefire-extension deal, is wavering — nobody will begrudge Munir his effort. And, in absence of any viable alternatives, he will remain the indispensable interlocutor for both sides.

If there is a breakthrough along the lines leaked to the media on Saturday, both Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu will struggle to sell it to their domestic audiences as a victory for the US and Israel. The regime in Tehran may crow, but its leadership face the unenviable task of rebuilding a shattered nation. But the Field Marshal will have had a very good war indeed.