The June framework has become the shared vocabulary of the US-Iran conflict. Turning a reference point back into a process is a harder task, and one that now tests Pakistan’s own position.
Few agreements in recent diplomacy have been declared dead and then praised back to life as quickly as the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. Signed electronically by Donald Trump and Masoud Pezeshkian on 18 June, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif countersigning as mediator, the 14-point framework was meant to halt the war the United States and Israel launched against Iran on 28 February, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift the American naval blockade of Iranian ports and give both sides 60 days to negotiate a final settlement. It did not survive the summer. US strikes resumed in July, Washington reinstated its blockade, and Tehran formally suspended its commitments, each side insisting the other had broken the text first.
Yet at the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, the memorandum resurfaced as the common vocabulary of nearly every party with a stake in the conflict. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar joined his counterparts from Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in calling for the MoU to be upheld. Pezeshkian told Sharif in New York that the document remained “fully acceptable” to Tehran and that Iran was ready to take it forward. In Washington the same week, Xi Jinping used his White House meeting with Trump to back a return to the June framework, a position his foreign minister, Wang Yi, had set out days earlier.
It is tempting to read this as renewed momentum, and in a narrow sense it is: the memorandum has become the default reference point for any future settlement. But a reference point is not a process. What happened in New York was a convergence of endorsement rather than implementation, and the party whose endorsement matters most, Washington, was the most guarded of all. Within a fortnight the conflict was moving in the opposite direction. Understanding why says more about the limits of the Islamabad track, and about Pakistan’s own position, than any communiqué.
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Why the text outlives its collapse
The MoU persists partly because it is the only document both governments have signed since the war began. Each president’s signature is on it, which makes it difficult for either to dismiss it without disowning his own commitment. For Tehran, its value lies in the American undertakings it records, among them ending the blockade within 30 days, sanctions waivers and access to frozen assets, which Iran argues were never honoured. Pezeshkian has called the memorandum the future “centre of gravity” of Iranian foreign policy. Declaring it acceptable costs Iran little and casts Washington as the defecting party.
The American calculation runs the other way. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has framed the MoU as conditional on compliance, and as a framework for negotiation rather than a settlement in its own right. Reviving the June terms now risks looking like a reward for Iran’s use of Hormuz as leverage, an awkward optic ahead of November’s midterm elections. So the United States engaged without recommitting. Trump disclosed a three-hour meeting between his team and an Iranian delegation on the Assembly’s sidelines and described it as productive, while Rubio said Washington was open to talks that promised results. From the podium, however, Trump threatened further military action and predicted that a deal would come after the midterms. Pezeshkian, for his part, said Tehran wanted the June understanding revived before them. Both capitals have tied the timing of any agreement to the American electoral calendar, and each appears to believe that waiting favours its side.
Beneath the timing dispute lies a sequencing problem the memorandum never solved. Iran wants the blockade lifted before it reopens the strait; Washington wants movement on Hormuz before it gives up its main source of leverage. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s New York proposal, to reopen the strait within seven days if the US ends the blockade, waives oil sanctions, releases frozen funds and halts hostilities on other fronts including Lebanon, restates Tehran’s preferred order rather than bridging the gap. The nuclear file adds further ambiguity. Pezeshkian said Iran was prepared to give up its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 per cent within the framework of its NPT obligations, yet a senior Iranian official told Reuters there would be no nuclear concessions even if Washington accepted the Hormuz proposal. The June text broke down over exactly these questions of who moves first and what counts as compliance. Endorsing it again does not answer them.
What China’s backing adds, and what it does not
Beijing’s support deserves to be taken seriously. China has a direct interest in a functioning Strait of Hormuz, and its position has been consistent rather than opportunistic: it welcomed the MoU when it was signed, and Wang has since urged both sides to return to it and rebuild a negotiating mechanism on the basis of what had already been agreed. Xi’s decision to raise the memorandum in the Oval Office, alongside trade and Taiwan, places it on the US-China agenda at the highest level.
But Chinese backing has limits that much of the commentary overlooks. Beijing describes itself as Iran’s comprehensive strategic partner, and according to Tehran’s account of their September meeting, Wang called the American war illegal. For Washington, a framework that Beijing champions does not become more attractive as a result; if anything, Chinese endorsement may reinforce Tehran’s sense that it enjoys diplomatic cover. More importantly, China’s support does not supply what the memorandum lacks. The text provided for an executive mechanism to monitor implementation, yet that did not stop the dispute over who breached first from escalating into renewed strikes. Tehran now wants guarantees upfront before returning to a deal it says Washington failed to honour. It is far from clear that the United States would accept any arrangement in which China acts as guarantor, and without an agreed way of verifying each step, the MoU remains a set of promises without an arbiter.
Pakistan’s channel, and its new constraint
None of this diminishes the substance of Pakistan’s role. Islamabad helped secure the April ceasefire, hosted direct US-Iran talks the same month, and alongside Qatar facilitated the June memorandum. The UN Secretary-General’s spokesman described Pakistan’s role as critical while noting that other countries had also been involved, which is a fair characterisation. Sharif’s insistence that Pakistan’s entire leadership is united behind the peace effort also carries practical weight. Much of Washington’s engagement with Islamabad has run through Field Marshal Asim Munir, and civil-military alignment gives Pakistan a coherence as a channel that many would-be mediators lack.
The harder question is whether that channel stays credible as Pakistan’s obligations elsewhere deepen. Islamabad’s diplomatic reach has also been presented as extending to the escalating confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis, and one Iranian analyst told Al Jazeera in September that Pakistan had relayed Saudi warnings to Tehran and urged it to restrain its Houthi allies. On 5 October, however, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye activated the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement after Houthi attacks on Saudi territory, pledging to expedite the deployment of forces and capabilities to the kingdom. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said Pakistan was already playing a supporting role, including reconnaissance. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman has said Tehran hopes reports of a Pakistani deployment are only rumours, warning that any new intervention in Yemen would complicate matters.
These are not the same role. In the US-Iran file, Pakistan is a facilitator; in the Saudi-Houthi conflict it is now a treaty party, and the two disputes are linked through Iran. Analysts have suggested that a clearly limited, defensive role on Saudi soil could remain compatible with mediation, while participation in offensive operations inside Yemen would not. There is precedent for drawing that line. In 2015, Pakistan’s parliament rejected a Saudi request for military support against the Houthis precisely to preserve room for diplomacy. Whether Islamabad can hold a similar line under a formal mutual defence commitment, rather than a request, is now a more consequential test of its mediating capacity than any number of endorsements gathered in New York.
From holding pattern to process
By early October the trajectory had turned. Pezeshkian called talks with Washington meaningless, tankers were being struck near Hormuz, US Central Command said its blockade had redirected 130 commercial vessels since it resumed in July, and Axios reported that Trump was weighing renewed major combat operations. Even so, the MoU’s survival as a shared reference text matters. It means any future settlement is likely to be built on its architecture rather than drafted from scratch, which keeps Pakistan and Qatar relevant to whatever comes next.
But a text that every party praises and none implements is a holding pattern, not momentum. The task for Islamabad is not to collect further affirmations of the June memorandum but to help design what it lacked from the start: a sequencing and verification formula that lets each side move without being seen to move first. Pakistan’s diplomacy has earned it a place at that table. Keeping it will depend less on the next round of praise in New York than on whether Tehran continues to see Islamabad as a channel rather than a party.
