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Islamabad / Riyadh / Doha / Washington — Two Chinese supertankers exited the Strait of Hormuz this week after waiting in the Gulf for more than two months — a confidence-building gesture approved by Iran, and a signal, however fragile, that the diplomatic machinery surrounding the US-Iran agreement effort is moving. Pakistan’s Interior Minister was
Islamabad / Riyadh / Doha / Washington — Two Chinese supertankers exited the Strait of Hormuz this week after waiting in the Gulf for more than two months — a confidence-building gesture approved by Iran, and a signal, however fragile, that the diplomatic machinery surrounding the US-Iran agreement effort is moving. Pakistan’s Interior Minister was in Tehran on May 17. Saudi Arabia had quietly presented Washington with a two-to-three-day diplomatic window on May 18. Qatar approved an LNG tanker to transit the Strait as a gesture of mediation and good faith.
Then, on May 20, President Trump told the world: “I’m in no hurry.”
Welcome to the most consequential diplomatic negotiation of 2026 — where every signal of progress is immediately complicated by the principals, and where the difference between a breakthrough and a collapse can be measured in a single Truth Social post.
No country has invested more diplomatic capital in the US-Iran agreement effort than Pakistan — and no country has more at stake in the outcome. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described his country’s role as “a shining moment in our history,” crediting Army Chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir as the figure who “will be recorded in history” for maintaining constant contact with Washington throughout the negotiations. Deputy PM Ishaq Dar has conducted shuttle diplomacy across every relevant capital. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi’s May 17 visit to Tehran — meeting President Masoud Pezeshkian, Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf — was Islamabad’s latest attempt to prevent the ceasefire from collapsing entirely.
As Al Jazeera’s assessment confirmed, Pakistan’s mediation is now “facing limits as Iran-US tensions deepen” — a sober verdict on a country that achieved something historically rare: direct talks between Washington and Tehran at the April 11–12 Islamabad negotiations, 21 hours of face-to-face engagement, still without a final deal. Bloomberg’s profile of Pakistan’s diplomatic approach noted that Islamabad “won over Trump” during those talks through a combination of military credibility, geographic necessity, and the unique trust Tehran extends to a Muslim nuclear power on its eastern flank.
Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic intervention has been the most consequential of all the Gulf States‘ contributions — and the most politically fraught. On May 4, Trump launched Operation Project Freedom, deploying more than 15,000 service members, guided-missile destroyers, and 100-plus aircraft to escort merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz. It lasted roughly 36 hours. Saudi Arabia denied the US military access to Prince Sultan Airbase and Saudi airspace to support the operation, forcing Trump to pause it on May 5 citing “great progress” toward a deal.
On April 14, Riyadh had already publicly broken with Washington’s maximum-pressure approach, explicitly backing negotiations over military action — the most significant statement from a US ally since the Iran strikes began. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom PM Sharif credited as a partner who “prodded Trump to suspend the military mission in the waterway,” co-authored the May 18 diplomatic window with Washington that gave negotiators two to three days to produce framework language.
Qatar’s role is structurally unavoidable: the emirate exports LNG through the Strait of Hormuz by necessity, with no pipeline alternative. Doha has stated plainly that using Hormuz as a “political weapon is unacceptable.” Qatar facilitated separate dialogues among the US, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey in May, and the Qatari LNG tanker transiting the Strait this week — with Iranian approval — was a deliberate, coordinated confidence measure.
Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi continues his quieter “facilitation” track, meeting Russia’s Lavrov on May 7 and Canada’s foreign minister in Muscat on May 13. As CBS News reported, Al Busaidi stated in February that a deal was “within our reach” — a position he has not publicly abandoned despite the months of stalled progress since.
Tehran’s negotiating architecture has been consistent throughout: settle the Strait of Hormuz question first, defer nuclear talks to a second phase. As Axios reported, Iran formally offered this sequenced framework in late April — Hormuz in exchange for ending hostilities, nuclear programme to be discussed separately under conditions of mutual security guarantees.
The Iranian position is grounded in a frank assessment of leverage. On May 9, Iranian authorities stated that control of the Strait of Hormuz was “on the level of an atomic bomb” in strategic importance, as Al Jazeera documented. Iran has established the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, requiring all transiting vessels to complete 40-plus question declarations. Some vessels have already paid up to $2 million per transit in Chinese yuan. Tehran has claimed the regime could generate $100 billion annually from Hormuz revenues — a figure displayed on billboards in Tehran’s metro system.
The US and all Gulf States have rejected the transit fee regime as illegal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. But rejecting it legally and removing it practically are different problems, particularly given Iran’s deployment of Ghadir-class submarines and IRGC fast boats throughout the strait and its expanded claim that the “operational area” now stretches from Jask to Siri Island — far beyond the traditional narrow corridor.
The most acute problem facing every mediator in this architecture is the principal they cannot control. On May 18, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar jointly presented Washington with a two-to-three-day window for a US-Iran agreement framework. Forty-eight hours later, Trump told reporters he was “in no hurry” to make a deal and explicitly rejected any agreement limited solely to reopening the Strait.
As PBS News confirmed, Trump said: “You know everyone thinks ‘oh the midterms, I’m in a hurry.’ I’m in no hurry. We’d have to open the strait, that would open immediately. So we’re going to give this one shot.” The statement directly contradicted the diplomatic timeline his own Gulf partners had authored — and reminded every mediator, from Islamabad to Doha to Muscat, that the Iran strikes decision architecture ultimately resides in a single, unpredictable mind.
The fifth round of talks in Rome, held May 23, ended without a breakthrough, though both sides agreed to continue. NPR’s Pakistan coverage captured the assessment of Pakistani officials precisely: “hopeful that the current momentum will lead to a lasting agreement” — the language of cautious, exhausted optimism from mediators who have come further than anyone expected and still have not arrived.
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