Pakistan Is Being Crushed Between Two Wars That Everyone Pretends Are Separate

On February 27, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X that his country was "ready to provide any necessary assistance to facilitate constructive dialogue" between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Twenty-four hours later, Iranian state media confirmed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was dead.

The mediator is gone. The mediation is over. And Pakistan is now trapped between two wars with no diplomatic exit on either side.

Two wars, one squeeze

Western media covers these as separate stories. CNN runs Iran on one feed, Pakistan-Afghanistan on another. But look at a map. Pakistan shares a 959-kilometer border with Iran to its west and a 2,670-kilometer border with Afghanistan to its northwest. Both borders are now active conflict zones. Both erupted within the same week.

On February 26, Afghanistan launched retaliatory strikes into Pakistan. Islamabad responded with Operation Ghazab Lil Haq, hitting Taliban positions in Kabul and border regions. Pakistan's prime minister's spokesperson, Mosharraf Zaidi, told Pakistani TV: "Terrorism from Afghanistan has to end." Pakistan said there'd be "no dialogue."

One day later, the U.S. and Israel launched the largest combined military operation against Iran in decades. CENTCOM confirmed strikes were "still under way." Trump said the "heavy and pinpoint bombing" would "continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary." CBS reported that U.S.-Israeli strikes killed 40 Iranian leaders, including Khamenei. Iran's government declared 40 days of mourning for the 86-year-old ayatollah who'd ruled for 36 years.

Pakistan issued a careful statement. It "opposes any external interference in Iran" and urged all parties toward restraint. That's the diplomatic equivalent of standing in a burning building and asking everyone to please stop lighting matches.

The energy stranglehold

Hours after the strikes began, the EU naval mission Aspides reported that vessels were receiving VHF transmissions from Iran's Revolutionary Guards: "No ship is allowed to pass the Strait of Hormuz."

Twenty percent of the world's oil moves through that strait. Brent crude closed Friday at $72.48. Markets were shut Saturday. Analysts from Goldman Sachs to OilPrice.com are forecasting a sharp "war premium" when trading opens. Goldman's worst-case scenario puts Brent at $110 if the Hormuz closure holds.

Pakistan imports over 80% of its oil. The country barely survived the 2021-2024 economic crisis that saw its rupee collapse and default loom. A sustained oil price spike doesn't just hurt Pakistan's economy. It threatens the country's ability to sustain a war.

The Times of India called it a "double whammy." That's underselling it. Pakistan can't upset the United States, which is currently bombing its western neighbor. It can't abandon its relationship with Iran, which supplies energy and shares a massive border. And it can't back down on Afghanistan, where its sovereignty is being tested daily by Taliban drone strikes on military camps in Miranshah and Spinwam.

The scrambled triangle

The historical geometry of this region used to be legible. Iran backed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in the 1990s. Pakistan backed the Taliban. They were on opposite sides of a clear proxy war.

Now that logic is unrecognizable.

Pakistan is at war with the Taliban — the force it once sponsored. Iran, the Taliban's historical enemy, is being destroyed by the same American military that Pakistan depends on for aid and diplomatic support. The Taliban, watching both its old adversary (Iran) and its old sponsor (Pakistan) weaken simultaneously, finds itself in a position it hasn't held in decades.

The Afghan Taliban can play both crises. With Iran's leadership decapitated, there's no regional counterweight on their western flank. With Pakistan's military stretched across two fronts, the pressure on the Durand Line eases. Every bomb that falls on Tehran is a strategic gift to Kabul.

The missing mediators

Araghchi wasn't the only one trying to broker peace between Islamabad and Kabul. Saudi Arabia had also offered. China, which has leverage with both Iran and Pakistan, was working backchannels. Russia called for de-escalation.

But the Iran strikes vaporized the diplomatic infrastructure. The UN Security Council convened an emergency session — called by France's Macron — but it's consumed entirely by the Iran crisis. Secretary-General Guterres told the council that about 20 cities had been hit. He said the strikes violated international law, including the UN Charter. He warned of a "wider conflict with grave consequences."

Pakistan-Afghanistan? It's barely on the agenda. The smaller war got swallowed by the bigger one.

This is the pattern that makes Pakistan's position so dangerous. It's not just fighting on two fronts. It's invisible on one of them. The world's diplomatic bandwidth is fully absorbed by Iran. Nobody's mediating the Afghanistan conflict anymore.

How it's being narrated

The framing gap tells its own story. In Indian media, Pakistan's predicament is analyzed with something between concern and schadenfreude — the "double whammy" framing treats it as Pakistan reaping consequences. In Chinese and Russian outlets, both conflicts are framed as products of American destabilization. In Western coverage, they're simply two different stories in two different tabs.

Almost nobody is mapping the connections.

The Conversation, an academic outlet, noted that India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Bangladesh are "particularly vulnerable" to both supply interruptions and price increases from the Hormuz closure. That's the closest anyone's come to drawing the line between the Iran strikes and Pakistan's ability to sustain its Afghan war.

What comes next

When markets open Sunday evening, oil prices will spike. Pakistan will feel it within days. Its war in Afghanistan requires fuel, logistics, military hardware — all of which cost more when oil costs more. Its diplomatic options narrow as the world focuses on Iran. Its historical relationships — with the Taliban, with Iran, with Washington — are all simultaneously contradictory.

The UN Security Council is debating Iran. Russia wants a ceasefire. The U.S. says the bombing continues. Meanwhile, Taliban drones hit Pakistani military positions, and nobody in New York is talking about it.

These aren't two separate crises. They're one system. Pakistan is the hinge. And the hinge is bending.