Karishma Vaswani, Columnist

Failed Iran-US Talks Show Limits of Pakistan’s Peace Push

April 13, 2026 at 2:30 AM UTC

Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC's lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.

A new generation of nations showed it is willing to take diplomatic risks.
Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Getty Images — A new generation of nations showed it is willing to take diplomatic risks.
Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Getty Images

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The collapse of peace talks between the US and Iran in Islamabad is a reminder of the fragile limits of diplomacy by middle powers navigating between great-power rivalries.

An ambitious coalition of nations, led by Pakistan and backed by China, alongside Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, pulled off something remarkable just by getting Washington and Tehran to the table to talk. But keeping them there is a different thing, and that gap was brutally exposed.