ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi is in Tehran to hold talks with senior Iranian officials, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported on Tuesday, amid Islamabad’s push to broker peace between the United States (US) and Iran.
Naqvi arrives in Tehran amid tensions between the US and Iran. US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would seek conflict compensation from Iran as part of any peace negotiations, citing attacks and killings stretching back decades allegedly backed or perpetrated by Tehran
Trump was responding to Iran’s insistence that US payment of war reparations is a pre-condition to any resolution of the ongoing hostilities. Fighting between the US and Iran, which ceased briefly in June after Pakistan brokered a peace deal between the two sides, resumed last month after Washington accused Tehran of attacking commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump last week threatened to hit Iran “very hard,” potentially with attacks against civilian infrastructure, only to pull back, hinting a peace deal was near.
“A diplomatic source told IRNA that Pakistani Interior Minister Senator Syed Mohsin Reza Naqvi left for Tehran for talks with senior officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” IRNA reported.
Later, IRNA shared a photo of Naqvi meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi with the caption: “Now Tehran.”
Naqvi’s counterpart, Eskander Momeni, arrived in Islamabad last month to hold talks with Pakistan’s leadership. Naqvi, along with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Defense Forces Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, has been closely involved in discussions with the Iranian leadership to end the war.
Naqvi has visited Iran multiple times in the past few months and met the country’s leadership, as Islamabad hopes to broker regional peace.
Pakistan has played a key role as mediator in the US-Iran war since it began in February. It brokered a ceasefire between the two sides in April and then hosted the first round of direct peace talks between them the same month.
Islamabad has repeatedly called for restraint by all sides and said dialogue remains the only viable path to preventing a wider regional conflict.
