The joint call by China and Pakistan for the United States and Iran to end hostilities and resume dialogue arrives as terrifying attacks have spread again across southern Iran and the Gulf.
That the immediate burden lies on Washington and Tehran cannot be stressed enough. Each says it is responding to the other’s breach of the Islamabad Memorandum signed in June and each regards coercion as a means of improving its negotiating position. Yet the past fortnight has shown the poverty of that calculation. American strikes have reached the Iranian coast and islands, while Iranian missiles and drones have put Gulf states hosting US forces on alert. The threshold between a contest over maritime passage and a region-wide conflagration is perilously low.
Since Hormuz is not an abstract bargaining chip, with roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passing through, any prolonged disruption raises freight and insurance costs before it registers at the petrol pump. Oil has already moved above $85 a barrel amid the latest escalation. For Pakistan, which imports the bulk of its petroleum needs and is only beginning to regain a measure of macroeconomic stability, another energy shock would quickly travel through transport fares, creating ripples across inflation. The same arithmetic applies, with far greater force, to poorer energy-importing states across Asia and Africa.
Tehran’s accusation that civilian sites have been hit and Washington’s assertion that it is acting against military infrastructure underline why an urgent, credible mechanism for verification is indispensable. Civilian protection cannot be left to rival communiqués after every strike.
The Shanghai meeting did not merely urge restraint in the air. It called on all parties to honour their commitments under the memorandum and return to dialogue. That is the only available bridge. Pakistan, Qatar and Egypt should continue their quiet contacts as Beijing uses its own channels to impress upon Tehran that keeping Hormuz open is in Iran’s interest as much as everyone else’s.
Washington, for its part, must resist those in the region who appear invested in converting a broken ceasefire into a permanent war. Even Vice-President JD Vance has publicly suggested that Israeli politicians are working to derail diplomacy. Such a claim, from within the administration, ought to sharpen rather than weaken the White House’s resolve to keep decisions anchored in American interests and regional stability. *