Every American or Israeli bomb that lands on Iranian soil is answered with Iranian missiles painting not-so-pretty fireworks over Israeli cities and setting a few Gulf oil installations ablaze. The scorecard is definitely not looking great for the opening side. No ball is spared.
Donald Trump, the ultimate dodgy dealmaker, now finds himself in a deal he never wanted to sign: lose face or lose the global economy to a crushing recession. Iran’s GDP may be a puny $400 billion against America’s $28 trillion, but Tehran has enough missiles, enough angry proxies, enough old-fashioned spite, and more than enough theological motivation to make those numbers look silly. Oil is already doing a crude dance. Brent the barometer is hovering around $120 a barrel. No American president wants to have gas prices going upward when there is a mid-term coming up. This is the legacy of losers, not of a guy who wins too much.
Wars, as history reminds us, have a nasty habit of toppling governments in the strangest places. The impact of this one is global and the energy cost crisis is already stretching budgets from Japan to Ireland. If the war goes on for a couple of months, governments will fall left and right, except the one in Tehran, for which this whole tragedy was invoked on the world.
That brings us, though circuitously, to a geopolitical possibility that may land straight in Pakistan’s lap and it wouldn’t know what to do with it.
EVERYBODY LOVES ME BUT WHY?
Pakistan, a major non-Nato ally of the United States, finds itself in its favourite position: uniquely screwed. Again. Unofficially managed by General Asim Munir, a man who has become Trump’s favourite field marshal without ever winning a war, Pakistan has emerged as the enthusiastic postman between Washington and Tehran. A role it got by fate because Iran and the US haven’t had embassies since the Islamic Revolution went postal on the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. Someone has to carry the awkward letters. Pakistan has been doing that for four decades. This time, it has attached a special pride to the postman’s job. Because it believes it’s brokering peace. Finally, a job that makes it feel important. Again.
At the same time, Pakistan is busy fighting its own little war on the western front with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The same Taliban that America spent 20 years and 2.3 trillion dollars trying to evict, only to hand them the keys, and a lot of weapons of war, and leave. Pakistan is well-versed in this irony, because the Taliban are graduates from warfare academies run by Pakistan. Irony.
Since Afghanistan quietly walked into irrelevance for the US, Pakistan lost its geopolitical advantage of location. Now that Iran is on the top of the American agenda, Pakistan has found its mojo back. It’s a curse wrapped in a boon package. Because the distance from being a broker to becoming a party is shorter than the short drive from Taftan to Zahedan. More on that later. First, the ominous sound of burning oil tanks and tankers coming out of the Persian Gulf.
There is excited chatter on social media about American amphibious assaults, battleships storming the Iranian coast like we have seen in Saving Private Ryan. Don’t take them seriously. The Pentagon’s generals, who will be well-versed with basic geography, know that Iran’s coastline is not Normandy beach. It is mostly cliffs, rocks, and “welcome, please die” signs in Farsi. The islands that actually matter, like Kharg, the crown jewel sitting deep in the Gulf, are not exactly waiting to garland the Marines. Any naval adventure there would be less D-Day and more “spectacular own goal”. Expect the best men to fall before they make landfall. Massacre. Macabre. This is not Vietnam. Images will travel in seconds. Outrage will follow and the scale will scare even the nonchalant Donald Trump.
So, if boots on the ground become inevitable (and diplomacy right now is producing nothing but bombastic bytes from that Khatam ul Anbiya guy and the White House girl), the most practical land route is the scenic drive from Taftan in Pakistani Balochistan to Zahedan in Iranian Balochistan. The slightly less suicidal sea option is the short swim from Gwadar in this Balochistan to Chabahar in the other. Yes, there are two Balochistans. One in Pakistan and the other in Iran. Both sides have long nurtured a dream to become one, independent nation. That dream has been a nightmare for both Iran and Pakistan.
If the boots on the ground need a road, the smoothest and least dangerous is the route from Pakistani Balochistan to Iranian Balochistan. Taftan to Zahedan.
Washington will, of course, ask Islamabad very politely, because that should be enough. Saudi Arabia, which has been vocally asking the Americans to finish the job, will apply the necessary pressure on Islamabad to open the road. Between them, the US and the Saudis have poured more than $50 billion into Pakistan over the years in aid. The IMF instalments Pakistan lives on are controlled by the US. Pakistan has a defence treaty with Riyadh. General Asim Munir cannot, in any practical sense, say no.
But saying yes has consequences that make “no” look almost romantic. A yes turns Pakistan into a legitimate Iranian target. Tehran has already shown it can reach out and touch someone across the region with ballistic precision. It also drags Pakistan into yet another American “forever war”, this time in a province it has never really controlled fully, never really understood fully. A countryside in a country already on fire.
THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province, is roughly the size of France and is treated with roughly the same affection Islamabad reserves for a distant poor relative. It is resource-rich, also restive, while being royally neglected. It is less a province and more a large open-pit mine with some inconvenient humans living on top. Those humans have formed armed groups to resist what they call Pakistani occupation. The Baloch want out, just like the Baloch across the border in Iran. Terror attacks inside Pakistan are at a 10-year-high. Since the Iran war kicked off, the Baloch Liberation Army has been publicly cheering every strike on Iranian security forces, clearly smelling an opportunity to upgrade from local nuisance to regional player.
The situation is so dire that the Chinese have all but folded their ambitious CPEC projects. If the Iranian push comes to shove, the Americans would want the same Chinese-built roads to reach Sistan-Balochistan.
Allowing American forces passage through Balochistan will not be an easy decision. America isn’t exactly popular among the populace in Pakistan. The Pakistani establishment will exact very high rent this time. Once again. The Baloch would want no less than that. They have known America pays handsome rent. The war with Taliban made Pakistani generals, if not Pakistan, richer.
What if Pakistan dares to say no? Washington has never been shy about redrawing maps when the original ones become inconvenient. Gwadar, that shiny deep-sea port China built and runs under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, sits strategically at the throat of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil flows. Balochistan itself is the glittering heart of Beijing’s $65 billion CPEC dream, packed with gold, copper, and other minerals that make economists drool. Gen. Asim Munir has boasted about its rare minerals to Trump in the Oval Office. It’s almost a dream Trump dreams. Road to Iran. And rare earth as bonus.
WHEN GLOBAL GOES LOCAL
China just wanted a quiet opening to the Arabian Sea. America, the land of Pepsi, would want more. Ye Dil Maange More. More so under Trump. The triangle where Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan meet near Zahedan has, by a twist of fate, become the most valuable from being the most ignored real estate on the planet. The war that began as a grand Middle East project may end up as a very local scrap over who controls the taps at Hormuz.
This war has gradually made the world realise the importance of the Strait of Hormuz. Everybody knew how critical it was but nobody, not even Iran, extracted any real value from that geostrategic edge. Now, everybody needs it. Iran owns it. The US wants it.
In the end, Geopolitics is local. Because for the rest of the world, the war has concentrated into this thin strip that is key to their energy security. If Americans and Israelis do not get the much-needed opening, this grand global conflict may yet shrink to a very Pakistani problem in the dusty wasteland of Balochistan. Islamabad cannot say no. And when it eventually says yes, it will wake up to find American boots on the same cursed, coveted soil. Boots that have a famous habit of overstaying their welcome. If Islamabad starts getting ideas about asking them to leave, Washington has never hesitated to fund “freedom movements”, especially when one is already conveniently available and armed to break free.
In the end, Pakistan will find itself praying between a rock and a very hard place. The rock is called geography. The hard place is called consequences. And the prayer, as usual, will be led by the legit Hafiz-ul-Quran Asim Munir, Trump’s favourite field marshal. Allah hu Akbar.
– Ends
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