Pakistan, the New Intermediary Between Washington and Tehran: A Useful Mediator, an Impossible Arbitrator
We must be wary of a word that comes up too quickly in this type of crisis: objectivity. In geopolitics, perfectly neutral mediators rarely exist. What exists, however, are actors who are deemed sufficiently acceptable for both adversaries to continue talking to each other without completely losing face. This is exactly the place that Pakistan is trying to occupy between the United States and Iran. The high-level talks held in Islamabad on April 11–13 were the largest between Washington and...