Islamabad, Pakistan – The US-Israel war on Iran has not paused. The strikes have not stopped from either side. However, diplomacy is now moving at a pace not seen since the conflict that affected Iran’s neighbours and rattled the world economy for a month.Two-day consultations of foreign ministers of Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan started in Islamabad on Sunday as the capital turned into the centre of a rapidly forming diplomatic track in what officials describe as the most coordinated regional effort yet to push the United States and Iran towards direct talks.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listHours before the meeting, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif held a 90-minute phone call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian – his second conversation with the Iranian leader in five days.According to officials, the call focused on de-escalation and what Tehran calls the missing ingredient in all previous negotiations: trust.Pezeshkian told Sharif that Iran had twice been attacked during earlier nuclear talks with the US and said the contradiction – talks on one hand, strikes on the other – had deepened Iranian scepticism about Washington’s intentions.He stressed that confidence-building measures would be required before Tehran could consider direct dialogue.The quadThe Islamabad meeting is not improvised. It is the evolution of a mechanism first discussed during a broader gathering of Muslim and Arab states in Riyadh earlier this month.That mechanism has now hardened into a four-country diplomatic track, with Pakistan acting as the …
