Asim Munir arrived in Tehran on October 20 bringing an assurance about a problem his own government had helped create. According to Iranian readouts, the field marshal said the difficulties at the Pakistan–Iran border had been resolved and the crossings reopened that morning. Having interrupted commercial traffic, Islamabad could now present its restoration as reassurance.

Eight days later, the diplomacy has advanced further than that assurance would suggest about conditions on the ground. Munir returned to Tehran on October 26 alongside senior Saudi and Turkish officials, while a new Qatari proposal offers another possible route away from war. But the latest detailed accounts from border traders described a partial reopening, restrictions on cargo and thousands of trucks still waiting. Pakistan’s diplomatic prominence is easier to establish than the reliability of the access it promises.

On October 28, Reuters reported that Qatari mediators had presented Iran with a draft agreement on October 25 setting out seven days of reciprocal confidence-building measures. According to an official briefed on the negotiations, Tehran’s response was expected by the end of the week, with several countries envisaged as guarantors. This is a proposal under consideration, not an agreement already secured. It nevertheless makes the conduct of prospective intermediaries and guarantors more consequential: confidence has to survive their own decisions as well as those of the belligerents.

The border offers an uncomfortable test. Pakistan suspended commercial traffic at Taftan and Gabd-Rimdan on October 17. Officials invoked security, smuggling and improved border management; Iranian explanations initially emphasised technical difficulties and precautionary measures. The interruption came while Iran’s maritime commerce remained constrained by the American blockade. Whatever its immediate administrative rationale, restricting land access reinforced the economic isolation from which Islamabad was simultaneously trying to negotiate an exit.

The reopening has also proved less straightforward than Munir’s announcement. Traders and customs agents reported that traffic resumed at Gabd-Rimdan on October 24, with rice and other food exports moving towards Iran and LPG trucks entering Pakistan. Reports from Taftan described an uneven resumption. By October 26, Gwadar Chamber of Commerce president Mir Naveed Jan Kalmati told AFP that the frontier was only partially open, estimating that 3,000–4,000 trucks were waiting on the Iranian side and another 2,000–3,000 on the Pakistani side.

On October 27, Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said the border was open and trade continuing. That statement does not establish that every restriction described by traders had disappeared. The most defensible conclusion is that some commerce has resumed while full, predictable access has yet to be demonstrated. A gate can be open while the business of getting through it remains obstructed.

Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan, Reza Amiri Moghadam, identified a more specific obstacle. In an October 25 statement, he said Tehran had imposed no restrictions on exports to Pakistan, including LPG, and blamed changes in Pakistan’s E-Form import procedures for preventing cargo dispatch. He also said several hundred LPG trucks had crossed into Gabd but remained uncleared or unloaded. These were Iranian claims about the source of the disruption, but they made clear that announcing a physical reopening had not resolved the commercial dispute.

The paperwork matters because the E-Form records imports and their payment arrangements through banks. Requiring banking documentation for trade with a heavily sanctioned country can obstruct transactions even when trucks are permitted to approach the frontier. Administrative requirements may have legitimate regulatory purposes. Their practical effect still needs explaining when the payment channels necessary to satisfy them are constrained.

The sanctions question therefore deserves more attention than the reassuring vocabulary of temporary disruption. Pakistan’s Foreign Office has said the country will comply with applicable sanctions regimes, without clearly resolving which restrictions explain the treatment of Iranian cargo. For traders, the immediate issue is whether they can complete a transaction. For Tehran, it is whether a neighbour offering mediation will preserve lawful commerce or allow uncertainty about sanctions to close routes that are officially open.

None of this proves that Washington ordered the suspension or that Islamabad is preparing to facilitate another American military campaign. Economic pressure can influence banking, commercial decisions and government behaviour without producing a publicly acknowledged instruction. The relevant questions concern the decisions Pakistan actually took, the obligations it invokes and the conditions under which normal trade can resume. Speculation about a secret order should not displace scrutiny of an observable restriction.

For Iran, the Pakistani crossings have acquired a value that ordinary bilateral trade figures cannot convey. Before the war, commerce between the neighbours was constrained by sanctions, banking restrictions and inadequate infrastructure. Under blockade, the importance of a route depends less on its previous turnover than on the alternatives still available. Roads cannot replace major ports. They can preserve supplies, sustain businesses and make isolation less complete.

Pakistan understood this when it authorised third-country goods to transit towards Iran through designated land routes in April. Those arrangements gave Islamabad a practical role in alleviating Iranian isolation and another reason for Tehran to maintain relations with it. Interruptions produce the opposite effect. Restoring access removes an additional restriction; it does not erase the demonstration that access can be withdrawn.

The diplomacy has nevertheless produced a genuine opening. On October 26, Munir joined Saudi Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin in talks with Iranian leaders in Tehran. The four countries agreed to continue discussions on regional peace and security. Bringing Iran together with representatives of a defence alliance assembled around Saudi Arabia was a substantive step, even without a settlement.

It also exposed Pakistan’s competing roles more clearly. The October 5 meeting of the Makkah Alliance for Defense had committed Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Türkiye to practical implementation of collective defence arrangements, including the rapid deployment of agreed forces and capabilities to the kingdom. Munir’s mediation therefore proceeds alongside a military commitment whose relevance has increased with Houthi attacks on Saudi territory.

Pakistani officials describe their Saudi mission as defensive and say their forces will not cross into Yemen. That limitation matters. Defending Saudi territory does not establish participation in an offensive against Iran, nor make such participation inevitable. Tehran is nevertheless entitled to examine what those commitments could become under pressure. An alliance activated amid attacks by an Iranian partner in Yemen inevitably affects Iran’s calculations, whatever its members say about their intentions.

Iran has not simply rejected that discussion. Its ambassador has indicated that Tehran would study the Mecca agreement before judging it. The October 26 meeting itself demonstrates a willingness to explore regional arrangements with the alliance’s members. It would be inaccurate to portray Pakistan’s Saudi commitment as having already destroyed its Iranian channel. The difficulty is maintaining that channel when reassuring Riyadh and reassuring Tehran begin to require different things.

Nor have the latest meetings removed the central obstacles between Iran and Washington. After meeting security chief Mohsen Rezaei on October 27, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei reiterated the importance of Iran’s conditions for ending the war. Tehran continues to demand an end to the blockade and sanctions on its oil exports; its nuclear programme was excluded from the October 26 discussions pending its demands being met. The new Qatari draft may offer a sequence for reciprocal steps. It has not yet produced consent to them.

Mediation does not require complete neutrality. Governments with alliances, interests and influence can make effective intermediaries precisely because they can reach parties others cannot. Pakistan can offer access to Washington and familiarity with Riyadh. To retain Iranian confidence, however, it must also show that its territory and economic decisions will not become additional instruments of coercion. Predictable border access would be a useful place to start.

Balochistan supplies ample insecurity of its own. The October 22 attacks around Gwadar and Gabd, including the burning of freight trucks, underline the danger to transporters. Pakistani forces face a persistent nationalist insurgency, while Iranian security personnel have suffered repeated attacks across the frontier. The reciprocal strikes of January 2024 demonstrated how quickly accusations about armed groups can become military action between the two states.

Neither government needs to invent its security concerns. But their existence does not make every restriction an effective response. The secular nationalist organisations fighting Pakistan and the Sunni armed groups attacking Iranian forces have different political projects. Treating them as a single cross-border problem obscures those differences and encourages the familiar assumption that the frontier itself explains rebellions rooted in each state’s treatment of its Baloch population.

Closing recognised commercial routes also imposes its most immediate costs on people whose activities are visible and regulated. Drivers wait, fruit deteriorates, transport charges accumulate and traders lose customers. The interruption of Iranian LPG supplies has also brought shortages and higher prices inside Pakistan. Reopening allows business to resume; it cannot recover every lost sale or remove costs already incurred. Local businesses are expected to finance the interval between a strategic decision and its eventual explanation.

There is a wider political consequence. Islamabad presents regional connectivity as a national asset while repeatedly demonstrating how quickly access can be withdrawn. Businesses already exposed to disruptions along the Afghan frontier now face uncertainty on another western route. A corridor whose operation depends on opaque decisions cannot provide the predictability commerce requires. Announcing that a problem has been resolved is easier than persuading a transporter to risk another consignment.

For the military leadership, diplomatic prominence and security commitments bring international recognition. The costs of reconciling them fall elsewhere: on civilian businesses, border communities and a province governed too often through the language of emergency. Balochistan is expected to accommodate Pakistan’s strategic geography while receiving little authority over the decisions that make that geography dangerous.

Pakistan is playing its familiar shell game: preserving Iranian trust, satisfying Saudi expectations and avoiding American displeasure while managing an insurgency along the frontier through which it promises connectivity. The new negotiations give those competing objectives another opportunity to coexist. They do not make the contradictions disappear.

Munir may still help carry a workable agreement between capitals. Its credibility will depend partly on what Pakistan does when the interests of its partners collide. At Taftan and Gabd-Rimdan, even reopening the gates has proved more complicated than the diplomatic announcement. Trust will require considerably more than permission for the next truck to pass.