The Iranian One has just started
Nobody seems to be interested in Pakistan’s diplomatic resurrection. What does it mean that a country written off as failed just a year ago is now the hinge of a regional peace settlement and averting World War Three on the double. This is the actual story of 2026 and it is not on our comment boards.
Pakistan: From Failed State to Diplomatic Champion
A year ago, before Operation Sindor, Pakistan was being written off in every serious strategic publication in the English language. The IMF was reluctant. Every mainstream Indian and Western analyst agreed. Pakistan was finished as a regional actor of any significance.
Today Pakistan is mediating, leading, the Iran crisis. The Hormuz situation, which could have escalated into a catastrophic closure of the world’s most important oil chokepoint, is moving toward resolution largely because Pakistan has positioned itself as the only party credible with Tehran, Riyadh, and Washington simultaneously.
The war that looked civilisational is now looking more like a pivot point. Pakistan is not a failed state. India is not uniquely ascendant under PM Modi. The question of whether the BJP holds power post-Modi is now a live one, not a theoretical one. Iran is not isolated. Israel is not unbreakable. The realignment is happening now, in real time, and almost nobody seems to be writing about it.
Iran Stood Up
The other half of the story is Iran. Iran stood up to the United States and survived it. That is a sentence that sounds unremarkable until you remember how few states have done it in the last forty years and what happened to most of the ones that tried. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. The list is short and the endings are grim.
Tehran has not only survived. It has emerged with its leverage intact, its regional network bruised but functioning, and its diplomatic position stronger than it was before the confrontation began. The mobile phone and the internet did more damage to the regime’s domestic legitimacy in a decade than American sanctions did in forty years. Zan, Zendegi, Azadi forced real concessions. The women of Tehran do not wear the hijab in the way they were required to a few years ago. And yet the state itself is now a global player in a way it was not in 2024. Both things are true at once. That is the interesting part.
Pakistan and Iran together are now running a diplomatic corridor that the great powers, distracted by Ukraine and then by Hormuz, have effectively conceded to them. Neither country should, on paper, be able to do this. Both of them are doing it.
The Far Right in Dissent
The other signal worth reading is the state of the global far right, which looked ascendant eighteen months ago and looks, right now, quietly unwell.
PM Modi is still there but the aura seems thinner? The question of BJP succession is open in a way it was not before. Netanyahu is politically cornered at home and strategically overextended abroad. Orbán is out of power after 16 years on top. Even Trump, who has managed to stay on and who is not going anywhere, is governing a country where his coalition is visibly fraying and where the economic story is no longer the one he ran on.
Four leaders who looked, a year ago, like the vanguard of a durable global realignment. Four leaders who look, this week, like figures who peaked earlier than their supporters expected. The pattern is not universal and we are not predicting their imminent removal (Orbán has conceded). But the civilisational confidence has gone out of the movement. What is left is the machinery, and the machinery without the confidence is a different thing.
The BP Pivot
Instead we are arguing about Aurangzeb. The most commented thread on Brown Pundits this week is about whether Hindus are required to love the Mughals. The second most commented thread is about the TCS Nashik conversion case (which as an aside is an excellent piece by co-editor Gaurav Lele). These are real questions. They are not the question.
The question is what happens when the post-Ukraine pre-Hormuz paradigm breaks and a new one has not yet formed. Four heterodox states, India, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, now sit at the front rank of strategic relevance. The great powers, China and the United States above all, are not setting the agenda in this corridor right now. The middle powers are. That is a historical inflection and it is not a small one.
The World At Large
Pakistan has transformed into a global player. Iran has transformed into a global player by refusing to be broken. The far right is in dissent across four continents. The realignment that looked settled in the spring of 2025 is no longer settled. The story of 2026 is not the story of 2025 with slightly different casualty figures. It is a different story.
We are going to write that story on this blog, whether the commentariat follows us into it or not. The Aurangzeb thread will keep running. The Aryan Migration Precedent Post will get written. But the centre of gravity is moving, and BP has to move with it.
The Crimea-Hormuz paradigm is over. Something else is beginning. We would rather be wrong about what is beginning than correct about what has already ended.
my 2 cents is you are over estimating Pakistan’s ability to influence events. It can definitely threaten Iran with an eastern front. It has no corresponding leverage with US or Saudis. As your own post highlights it is unable to keep the lights on. It can’t break away from the west.
India is slightly better placed to handle external shocks but has limited capacities at this point of time to influence things beyond immediate neighborhood. The fact that BJP does not have majority is a definite factor and explains the cautious than normal pattern.
On a broader point, viewing things with a left-right lens is not terribly helpful. It’s empire vs the rest. Empire is ascendant right now so nationalist governments will naturally be descendant.
are you sure Pakistan is as powerless as it seems.
it really does look like Pakistan is saving the world right now?
As Kabir points out that we ordinarily tilt towards India, that is Bharat, but some gratitude and acknowledgement to the Land of the Pure at redeeming humanity from existential shock, peut-être?
We disagree on the extent of help that Pakistan is doing right now. But even for that effort, yeah I am thankful. All of us (including world) hope for an early resolution. But I am also under no illusion that the tempo of events is controlled by anyone other than main parties to the conflict.
I dont think Pakistans recent success is based on solid ground. The talks failed which was a foregone conclusion.
And the last thing Pakistan needs is to get entangled as China or SA proxy in this war in the middle east.
Iran is the real standout here, and unfortunately for the Iranians the regime is even more entrenched because of this war. Hope that once the dust settles if it does the regime does the smart thing and reform to preserve itself especially since it may not need to and possible cannot depend on being a defender of Shiite islam any longer.
As far as Orban is concerned it is his fault for letting go JD Vance give him the kiss of death.
Yes Kiss of Death indeed.
The Iranian regime was anyway reforming – we speak to Iran / Iranians on an almost daily basis.
The rising middle powers of Eurasia: The eight countries that could swing the global power balancehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXyj7JkOfvo
Pakistan is indeed a global player.
Yes it is now – this was a huge defeat for US Hegemony tbh