Tel Aviv, May 26 (IANS) Insisting that the United States should no longer regard Pakistan as a “dependable strategic partner”, a report has highlighted that a nuclear-armed state accused of assisting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), sheltering Iranian reconnaissance assets, and sustaining a decades-long history of proxy linkages cannot credibly be considered a reliable partner of regional security.
Writing for ‘Times of Israel’, Jose Lev Alvarez, an American-Israeli expert in Middle Eastern security policy, said that continued engagement with Islamabad in the absence of meaningful consequences only encourages further duplicity.
“Pakistan is stabbing America in the back. While masquerading as a neutral ‘mediator’ in the US-Israel-Iran conflict and hosting the ceasefire talks that shattered the April 8, 2026 agreement, Islamabad has been quietly cutting sordid side deals with Tehran. These pacts secure safe passage for its energy imports and, according to multiple reports, provided shelter for Iranian military aircraft at Nur Khan Airbase,” Alvarez detailed.
“In doing so, Pakistan is tightening the mullahs’ grip on the Strait of Hormuz and once again exposing the strategic duplicity that defines its foreign policy: milking Washington for military aid, diplomatic legitimacy, and economic favors while accommodating America’s adversaries behind closed doors,” he added.
The expert noted that Islamabad’s behaviour is rooted not in ideology but in “cold strategic calculation” shaped by the reality of a conventionally superior India, heavy reliance on China for economic and military support, and the necessity of functional ties with Iran amid chronic energy vulnerabilities across Pakistan.
“These realities push it toward a familiar hedging strategy: publicly cooperating with Washington while privately accommodating revisionist powers opposed to the American-led regional order. In this framework, alliances are transactional instruments subordinate to regime survival and strategic flexibility,” Alvarez mentioned.
He highlighted that over the past several decades, Islamabad has relied on “proxy warfare, covert balancing, and terrorist intermediaries” to counter India’s conventional superiority while “preserving manoeuvrability between competing power blocs”. Its actions during the 2026 crisis in West Asia, he argued, fit with this long-established pattern.
According to the expert, Pakistani leadership has made its strategic approach clear: engaging with Washington when convenient while at the same time supporting forces openly hostile to US interests. He argued that Washington should respond with closer scrutiny, conditional engagement, and a far more “hard-nosed” assessment of Pakistan’s role in the shifting power dynamics across the Middle East and Indo-Pacific region.
Emphasising the wider implications of any alliance with Pakistan, Alvarez said, “These self-described ‘neutrals’ are not neutral at all. They are aligned, openly or quietly, with the forces driving instability, coercion, and terror across the region.”
–IANS
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