Israel | Pakistan

Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday slammed last month’s attacks by Israel and the United States on Iran as “unacceptable” as he attended a ministerial meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in China’s Tianjin. The SCO is a 10-nation Eurasian security and political grouping whose members include China, Russia, Pakistan, India, and Iran. The group’s foreign ministers meet as a precursor to the annual summit of its leaders, which will be hosted by China this autumn in Tianjin. On June 13, Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign on Iran that targeted military and nuclear sites as well as residential areas, and killed senior military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians. The attacks began days before a planned meeting between Tehran and Washington aimed at reviving nuclear negotiations. The US, which had been in talks with Iran since April 12, joined Israel in carrying out its own strikes on June 22, targeting Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz. Iranian authori...

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh yesterday firmly dispelled speculation that the United States is exerting pressure on Pakistan to recognize Israel.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, has clarified that there is no pressure from Washington for Islamabad to recognize Israel.

Posts from multiple users on social media platform X on Thursday shared a video clip, claiming it showed journalist Absar Alam urging Pakistan to explore the benefits of recognising Israel. However, the viral clip is incomplete and he is actually questioning whether recognising Israel would bring any real benefits to Pakistan. The Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States in 2020, are landmark agreements for diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. These accords paved the way for formal ties, such as embassies and trade deals, underpinned by mutual interests in security, economic collaboration, and technology exchange. While celebrated as a diplomatic shift in the Middle East, the accords also sparked debate and resistance in Pakistan. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Defence Minister Khawaja Asif have both affirmed that Pakistan will not join, asserting that any recognition of Israel would contradict its longstanding supp...

Iran’s foreign minister has held talks with Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, the Saudi foreign ministry said, two weeks after a ceasefire between regional rivals Iran and Israel began. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said his country hoped the truce would contribute to regional stability, and emphasised Riyadh’s position “in supporting dialogue through diplomatic means as a path to resolving disputes,” the ministry said in a post on X early on Wednesday. According to the Saudi ministry, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “expressed his gratitude” to Riyadh for its condemnation of Israel’s attacks on Iran last month. Israel launched its unprecedented bombing campaign on Iran on June 13, targeting military and nuclear facilities as well as residential areas. The strikes killed more than 1,000 people in Iran, including senior military commanders and nuclear scientists, according to Tehran. Israel, in turn, was hit by waves of drone and missile fire from Iran, which Israeli authorities said left at lea...

Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman delivered a forceful press conference in Lahore, warning that any attempt by Pakistan to recognize Israel or join the Abraham Accords would be met with strong public resistance.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in an interview released on Monday that his country has “no problem” restarting nuclear talks with the United States, provided that trust can be reestablished between Washington and Tehran, and also accused Israel of attempting to assassinate him. The remarks, made during an interview with US journalist and former Trump confidante Tucker Carlson, came less than a month after Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign on June 13 against Iran and the US struck the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities. The attacks took place days before Tehran and Washington were set to meet for a new round of nuclear talks, stalling negotiations that were aimed at reaching a deal over Iran’s atomic programme. “We see no problem in re-entering the negotiations,” the Iranian president said. “There is a condition … for restarting the talks. How are we going to trust the US again? “We re-entered the negotiations, then how can we know for sure that in the middle of the talks, the Isra...

Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments. The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller […]

Syria said on Friday it was willing to cooperate with the United States to reimplement the 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, which created a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating the two countries’ forces. In a statement following a phone call with his US counterpart Marco Rubio, Asaad al-Shaibani expressed Syria’s “aspiration to cooperate with the United States to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement”. Washington has been pushing diplomatic efforts towards a normalisation deal between Syria and Israel, with envoy Thomas Barrack saying last week that peace between the two was now needed. Speaking to The New York Times, Barrack confirmed this week that Syria and Israel were engaging in “meaningful” US-brokered talks to end their border conflict. Following the toppling of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel deployed its troops into the UN-patrolled zone separating Syrian and Israeli forces. It has also launched hundreds of air strikes on military targets in Syria and carried ou...

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said the army must draw up a plan to prevent Iran from threatening Israel again after the arch-foes fought a 12-day war last month, in comments released on Friday. “The Israeli military’s current mission is to prepare an enforcement plan to ensure that Iran cannot threaten Israel again,” Katz said at a meeting with military leaders on Thursday, according to a statement released by his ministry. “The army must prepare on the intelligence and operational level to ensure that the air force maintains air superiority over Tehran, the ability to enforce restrictions on Iran and prevent it from rebuilding its capabilities,” he added. Israel launched a bombing campaign against Iran on June 13 following a decades-long shadow war, saying it aimed to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition Tehran has consistently denied — and degrade its ballistic missile arsenal. Following a US-announced ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to prevent Iran...

President Donald Trump on Saturday lashed out at prosecutors in Israel over the corruption trial that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced, saying Washington, having given billions of dollars worth of aid to Israel, was not going to “stand for this”. Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in Israel on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust - all of which he denies. The trial began in 2020 and involves three criminal cases. “It is INSANITY doing what the out-of-control prosecutors are doing to Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, adding that the judicial process was going to interfere with Netanyahu’s ability to conduct talks with Palestinian militants Hamas, and Iran. Trump’s second post over the course of a few days defending Netanyahu and calling for the cancellation of the trial went a step further to tie Israel’s legal action to US aid. “The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar [sic] a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We ...

Posts from multiple users on social media platforms X and Facebook since Monday shared videos allegedly showing Iranian armed forces thanking Pakistan for intelligence support against Israel. However, the viral clips are AI-generated. Israel launched wide-scale air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, military sites and private residences, killing top commanders, scientists and hundreds of others on June 13. Both countries traded wave after wave of devastating strikes and missile volleys since then. A ceasefire was achieved on June 24 after 12 days of fighting. On Monday, a pro-military account on Facebook shared a video of two soldiers allegedly recording a video in gratitude to Pakistan. “Our nuclear programme is safe. Thank you, Pakistan, for protecting it with your intelligence support,” they said. The post was captioned: “An Iranian soldier thanking Pakistan, saying: Thank you, thank you, thank you.” The post gained 1.4 million views and 12,000 reactions. The viral clip was also shared here, here, ...

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has strongly condemned the Israeli aggression towards Iran and criticised the Western world’s “double standard”, saying that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) performance was “tainted with hypocrisy and a selective approach”. Asif earlier stressed that Pakistan stood in “complete solidarity” with Iran amid Israel’s unprovoked and “unjustified aggression” against Tehran, which began on June 13 and escalated over 12 days. The conflict intensified after the US intervened by striking three of Iran’s nuclear sites. Tehran first responded by launching missiles at Tel Aviv, then targeted US bases in Qatar following the American strikes. On Tuesday morning, US President Donald Trump announced that Iran and Israel had reached a “ceasefire”. Israel, without evidence, claimed that its initial strike on Iran was “preventive”, meant to address an immediate, inevitable threat from the Islamic Republic’s part to construct a nuclear bomb. Tel Aviv also suggested that the IAEA repor...

Israel’s military said Iran launched waves of missiles on Tuesday, with emergency services reporting four people killed, hours after US President Donald Trump announced a complete ceasefire between Israel and Iran to end a 12-day war. Witnesses said they heard explosions near Tel Aviv and Beersheba in southern Israel. Israel’s military said six waves of missiles were launched by Iran and Israel’s national ambulance service said four people were killed in Beersheba, the first reported deaths in Israel since Trump announced the ceasefire late on Monday. Trump said on Tuesday a ceasefire between Israel and Iran was now in place and asked both countries not to violate it, only hours after Iran launched waves of missiles, which Israel’s ambulance service said killed four people. “The ceasefire is now in effect. Please do not violate it!” he said in a Truth Social post. Earlier, a senior White House official said Trump had brokered a ceasefire deal in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel...

ISTANBUL: Foreign ministers from Muslim countries on Sunday urged Israel to end its aggression towards Iran, without mentioning the US strikes on the Islamic republic’s nuclear sites. Ministers from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) “condemn firmly the aggression of Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran, stress the urgent need to stop Israeli attacks and their great concern regarding this dangerous escalation”, said a statement, issued after the end of a summit in Istanbul this weekend. It made no direct reference to the US bombardment of Iran’s key nuclear facilities early on Sunday, after President Donald Trump decided to join Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme. But the OIC did denounce the “destabilisation policies of Israel in the region and its recent attacks on Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, constituting a flagrant violation of sovereignty and security of these countries and international law”. Omits mention of US strikes on nuclear facilities; Dar wants Israel held accountable, s...

ISLAMABAD - Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar yesterday reiterated Pakistan’s strong condemnation of ongoing Israeli aggression against the sovereignty of Iran and called for accountability of Israel’s unjustified and illegitimate actions.

Israel likely to launch solo strike on Iran soon, sources say, citing air advantage and urgency due to war costs

Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations so far pose only limited risks of contamination, experts say. But they warn that any attack on the country’s nuclear power station at Bushehr could cause a nuclear disaster. Israel says it is determined to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities in its military campaign, but that it also wants to avoid any nuclear disaster in a region that is home to tens of millions of people and produces much of the world’s oil. Fears of catastrophe rippled through the Gulf on Thursday when the Israeli military said it had struck a site in Bushehr on the Gulf coast — home to Iran’s only nuclear power station — only to say later that the announcement was a mistake. What has Israel hit so far? Israel has announced attacks on nuclear sites in Natanz, Isfahan, Arak and Tehran itself. Israel says it aims to stop Iran from building an atomic bomb. Iran denies ever seeking one. The international nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has reported damage to the uran...

Roughly one month ago, from the stage at an investment forum in Saudi Arabia, US President Donald Trump issued a warning to Iran that would prove prophetic. “We’ll never allow America and its allies to be threatened with terrorism or nuclear attack,” Trump told the crowd, sending a message to the leadership in Tehran. “The time is right now for them to choose. Right now. We don’t have a lot of time to wait. Things are happening at a very fast pace.” That May 13 ultimatum received little attention at the time. But behind the scenes, the president already knew an attack on Iran could be imminent — and that there might be little he could do to stop it, according to two US officials. By mid-May, the Pentagon had begun drawing up detailed contingency plans to aid Israel if it followed through on its long-held ambition to strike Iran’s nuclear programme, the officials said. And the US had already diverted thousands of defensive weapons away from war-torn Ukraine toward the Middle East in preparation for potential c...

Strongly condemning the unjustified and illegitimate aggression by Israel against Iran, Pakistan on Thursday urged the international community and the United Nations to bear the responsibility to uphold international law, stop this aggression immediately, and hold the aggressor accountable for its actions.