Washington, May 12: Pakistan, which is playing mediator to end the USIran war, allowed Iranian military aircraft to park on its airfields to shield them from American airstrikes, CBS News reported here quoting US officials. The report also claimed that Iran had also parked its civilian aircraft in neighbouring Afghanistan to protect it from US airstrikes.
Reacting to the report, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called for a complete re-evaluation of Pakistan’s role as a mediator to end the US-Iran war that broke out on February 28 and has been put on pause since April 8.
“If this reporting is accurate, it would require a complete reevaluation of the role Pakistan is playing as mediator between Iran, the United States and other parties,” Graham, the Senator from South Carolina, said in a post on X.
“Given some of the prior statements by Pakistani defense officials towards Israel, I would not be shocked if this were true,” Graham said.
The CBS report, quoting unnamed US officials, said that Iran has sent “multiple aircraft”, including a reconnaissance and intelligence plane, to Pakistan’s Nur Khan airbase soon after US President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire in April.
A senior Pakistan official rejected the claims involving Nur Khan Air Base, and told CBS News, that “Nur Khan base is right in the heart of (the) city, a large fleet of aircraft parked there can’t be hidden from (the) public eye”.
An Afghan civil aviation officer told CBS News that an Iranian civilian aircraft belonging to Mahan Air landed in Kabul shortly before the war started and remained parked after the closure of the Iranian airspace. The same aircraft was moved to an airport in Herat near the Iranian border after Pakistan launched attacks on Afghanistan, the Afghan officials said, adding that the Mahan Air plane was the only Iranian aircraft in the country.
Pakistan’s reliance on China for military assistance has risen dramatically over the past decade. A Stockholm International Peace Research Institute study showed China supplied about 80 per cent of Pakistan’s major arms between 2020 and 2024, and Islamabad also has close economic ties with Beijing, the CBS News report said.
Islamabad has attempted to navigate both sides of the crisis – presenting itself to Washington as a stabilizing intermediary while avoiding steps that could alienate Tehran or China, Iran’s most powerful international backer, the CBS News report said. (Agencies)