Two Wars, One Crisis: How Iran and Pakistan-Afghanistan Are Feeding Each Other

Pakistan raised petrol prices by 55 rupees per litre on Friday — the steepest single hike in years. Stations started rationing. Scuffles broke out at pumps in multiple cities. The country has 26 days of fuel reserves left.

That number matters because Pakistan isn't just dealing with expensive oil. It's fighting a war on its western border with Afghanistan, now in its fifteenth day. And the reason oil costs so much — the Strait of Hormuz sitting at a near-total halt — comes from a different war entirely: the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, now entering its second week.

Most coverage treats these as separate crises. They aren't.

The hinge

Pakistan occupies the worst strategic position of any country on Earth right now.

To its west, open war with Afghanistan. Pakistani and Afghan troops exchanged fire at dozens of border points on Friday in what Reuters called the deadliest day of fighting yet. The UN says 100,000 people have been displaced. At least 56 Afghan civilians are dead — nearly half of them children.

To its southwest, the Iran war rages across a shared border region. Balochistan province absorbs pressure from three directions: Afghan fighting to the northwest, Iranian chaos to the southwest, and a domestic BLA insurgency that never went away.

And from the sea, the Hormuz closure is strangling Pakistan's economy. The country imports 90% of its oil and 99% of its liquefied natural gas through that strait. Zero oil tankers passed through Hormuz in the past 24 hours, according to Bloomberg's Joint Maritime Information Center data.

Every battalion Pakistan sends to the Afghan border is one fewer watching for spillover from Iran. Every rupee spent on fuel goes further from affordability. The two wars are compressing Pakistan from opposite sides.

The Saudi trap

Here's the connection that should worry everyone.

Pakistan signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia in September 2025. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif flagged it publicly this week. The Financial Times reported that Pakistan is "signalling the Saudi pact could draw it into the Iran war."

Saudi Arabia is under Iranian missile attack. On Friday, Iran launched its 23rd wave of retaliatory strikes, hitting targets across the Gulf. If Riyadh invokes that defence agreement, Pakistan faces a nightmare: fighting Afghanistan, defending Saudi Arabia, and managing Iranian spillover simultaneously.

Asif laid out the fear bluntly. If the current Iranian regime falls, he warned, a new Tehran government could align with India and Afghanistan against Pakistan — "turning Pakistan into a vassal state surrounded by enemies on all sides."

Whether that scenario is realistic matters less than the fact that Pakistan's defence minister said it on the record. It reveals how Islamabad sees its position: existential.

The oil weapon nobody aimed

Nobody designed the Hormuz closure to hurt Pakistan specifically. But it's hitting harder there than almost anywhere else.

Brent crude closed Friday at $92.69 per barrel — up 35% for the week. That's the biggest weekly gain in futures trading history since 1983. Qatar's energy minister warned prices could reach $150 if the strait stays closed. JPMorgan says production cuts could approach 6 million barrels per day by next week as Gulf producers literally run out of storage space.

Kuwait has already started cutting production. Iraq shut down 1.5 million barrels per day. Saudi Aramco is rerouting through its Red Sea terminal at Yanbu, with loadings up 60%. The UAE is pushing exports through Fujairah, outside the strait. But these workarounds can't replace Hormuz. Nothing can.

For Pakistan — already spending heavily on military operations in Afghanistan — every dollar added to the oil price directly degrades its ability to sustain the fight. The wars are linked through the price of fuel.

China's quiet gambit

The most consequential development of the week might not involve a single missile.

Reuters reported that China is negotiating directly with Iran for safe passage of Chinese-flagged oil and LNG vessels through Hormuz. If this deal goes through, it creates something the world has never seen: a two-tier energy system where one nation — not the US Navy — decides who gets oil through the world's most critical chokepoint.

The implications reach far beyond this war. For decades, the US guaranteed freedom of navigation through Hormuz. If China replaces that guarantee for its own vessels, it fundamentally reshapes who holds power over global energy. This is a geopolitical shift hiding inside a shipping negotiation.

For Pakistan, a China-Hormuz deal could be a lifeline — Beijing is Islamabad's closest ally and could extend passage rights. Or it could deepen dependency on a single patron at the worst possible moment.

What each side sees

The framing gap between regions is enormous right now.

In Washington, Trump demanded Iran's "unconditional surrender" on Friday — the broadest statement of war aims yet. The White House clarified this means when Iran "no longer poses a threat." The US House voted 219-212 against halting the war. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said, "We have only just begun to fight."

In Tehran, President Pezeshkian offered the first diplomatic signal since the war began: "Some countries have begun mediation efforts." But an Iranian official told reporters those approaches have been "rejected by our side." Iran's position: no negotiations until a new Supreme Leader is named. The Assembly of Experts still hasn't voted — partly because Israeli jets bombed their office in Qom during an electoral session on March 3.

In Islamabad, the Pakistan-Afghanistan war gets barely a paragraph in most global outlets. It's been eclipsed by the scale of the Iran conflict. Yet 100,000 displaced people and 56 dead civilians don't become less real because a bigger war is happening nearby.

Indian media, meanwhile, frames both conflicts as a single Pakistan-disadvantaging event. India Today published an analysis arguing Pakistan deliberately started the Afghan war as "backburning" — creating its own crisis to manage because it could neither oppose Trump's Iran strikes nor be seen supporting them.

Chinese state media maintains that the US-Israeli strikes are "unprovoked armed aggression" while quietly pursuing the Hormuz deal that could make China the gatekeeper of Gulf energy.

The invisible crisis

There's a humanitarian catastrophe forming in the spaces between these wars that almost nobody is covering.

Afghan refugees in Pakistan are being arrested and deported — police raids are targeting undocumented Afghans even as bombs fall on both sides of the border. The UN says 232,500 Afghans have returned from Iran and Pakistan so far in 2026, many against their will.

But returned to where? Eastern Afghanistan is a war zone. Western Afghanistan borders Iran — also a war zone. Afghans fleeing Pakistan can't safely go home. Afghans fleeing Iran can't safely go home. There is no safe direction.

And in the security vacuum created by both wars, ISIS-K sees opportunity. The group operates across the Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan tri-border area. Both the Taliban and Pakistan's military are distracted fighting each other. Iran's eastern security forces are redeploying to defend against US-Israeli strikes. The exact conditions ISIS-K exploits best are forming right now, and nobody has bandwidth to stop it.

What to watch

Three things will determine whether this crisis stays at its current awful level or gets worse.

First, the China-Hormuz negotiations. If Beijing secures safe passage, oil might stabilize around $95. If talks fail, $100 per barrel by Monday is likely. For Pakistan's 26-day fuel reserves, this is the difference between survival and economic collapse.

Second, the Saudi defence pact. If Iran's retaliatory strikes on Saudi Arabia intensify and Riyadh asks Islamabad for help, Pakistan enters a three-front war. Watch for any language from either capital about "treaty obligations."

Third, Iran's succession crisis. The Assembly of Experts must choose a Supreme Leader while the country is being bombed. If hardliners install Mojtaba Khamenei — the late leader's son — expect escalation. If pragmatists prevail, there's a narrow window for diplomacy. Trump saying he intends to play a "direct role" in selecting Iran's next leader doesn't help.

The world is covering two wars. It should be covering one crisis.