US VP Vance Meets Iranian Delegation in Islamabad — Pakistan Hosts Historic Direct Diplomacy

US Vice President James David Vance and an Iranian delegation led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf held direct talks in Islamabad on April 10, 2026, aiming to consolidate a ceasefire that would end weeks of US-Iran hostilities. The meeting — hosted on Pakistani soil and facilitated by Field Marshal Asim Munir's back-channel communications — was a landmark diplomatic achievement for Islamabad and a strategic embarrassment for New Delhi. India had explicitly sought to prevent any multilateral framework that elevated Pakistan as a regional stabilizer, with EAM Jaishankar having dismissed Pakistan as a 'dalaal' (broker) nation in March 2026. The Islamabad talks demonstrated that the Trump administration was willing to work through Pakistan despite the post-Operation Sindoor tensions, undercutting India's effort to isolate Pakistan internationally. Indian strategic analysts noted that Washington's pragmatic use of Pakistan's geographic and diplomatic leverage had not been diminished by India's post-Sindoor expectations. The J&K dimension was also widely noted: a diplomatically elevated Pakistan would be better positioned to press its position on Kashmir at international forums, and the success of the Islamabad summit made India's sustained 'Pakistan isolation' narrative increasingly untenable.