Defence Minister Khawaja Asif took to social media on Wednesday to swat away Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest provocation, dismissing the claim that Pakistan was running foreign bot farms to poison U.S. opinion against Israel. Netanyahu would do well to read the writing on the wall before taking cock-and-bull stories to international media. According to Pew, 60 per cent of American adults now view Israel unfavourably, while 59 per cent have little or no confidence in Netanyahu’s handling of world affairs. Gaza is at the core of this collapse. Gaza’s health ministry says more than 70,000 Palestinians had been killed by November 2025, with at least 850 more Palestinians dead since the October 2025 truce. Watching the devastation unfold on their phones, ordinary Americans are being forced to see through the fog. No bot farm could invent the rubble of Gaza.
Netanyahu’s barb, however, fits a wider narrative contest that seeks to cast Pakistan as unreliable at the very moment Islamabad is emerging as a useful facilitator in the US-Iran crisis. Just this week, CBS carried a news story claiming Pakistan hosted Iranian aircraft at Nur Khan Air Base, with Islamabad’s Foreign Office rejecting it as “misleading and sensationalised” and saying such narratives appeared aimed at undermining regional peace efforts. Predictably, Indian outlets wasted no time in amplifying the same theme. Read in tandem with renewed attempts to frame Pakistan through Afghanistan, Balochistan, militancy, human-rights allegations and questions around its neutrality, the sequence is enough to reveal a damning pattern. Pakistan does not fear scrutiny, but it should recognise when scrutiny is being arranged into a diplomatic indictment.
The same theatre is visible elsewhere. Netanyahu’s office claimed he had made a secret wartime visit to the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi publicly denied it, insisting that its relationship with Israel is public, transparent and based on the Abraham Accords rather than undisclosed arrangements. Around the same time, reports and commentary alleging covert Gulf action against Iran also began making the rounds. The effect is politically useful for Israel’s escalation lobby, which seeks to manufacture the perception of a hidden anti-Iran coalition to keep Tehran suspicious of Arab capitals, and prevent any diplomatic stabilisation.
This is where Pakistan’s relevance becomes inconvenient for those invested in perpetual confrontation. Pakistan is not powerful enough to impose peace. No qualms about that. However, as repeatedly suggested by both the US and Iran, it is still useful enough to keep certain doors open. That alone makes it a target for actors who prefer the region to be perpetually trapped in military polarisation. At a time when much of West Asia is being pushed toward escalation, Islamabad’s value lies in maintaining communication where others seek a raging showdown. Netanyahu wants Pakistan dragged into his preferred theatre of suspicion and confrontation. Pakistan should refuse the role, defend its credibility, and continue doing what responsible states do in dangerous moments. *