Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said on Tuesday that the U.S. and Iran are close to “some sort of an arrangement,” adding that “things are shaping up again in favor of a peace arrangement or a deal.” He said the signals over the last two three days pointed to progress.
The comments came as Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Raza Naqvi arrived in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials, a reminder that Islamabad remains active in the effort to bridge the gap between the two sides. Pakistan has been mediating between the U.S. and Iran throughout the conflict alongside Oman and Qatar, and Asif’s remarks were the clearest sign yet that the discussions may be moving beyond loose contacts toward something more concrete.
That prospect landed on a day when the region again showed how fragile it remains. A cargo vessel was hit by a projectile near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the coast of southern Yemen on Tuesday, according to UKMTO, which said the vessel in the southern Red Sea was struck by an unknown projectile and that there were casualties. Marisks separately issued a security alert saying a Saudi-owned commercial vessel had reportedly been hit by a missile while transiting the Bab el-Mandeb and said initial reports pointed to three crew fatalities, including two Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian national.
At the same time, an Israeli attack on southern Lebanon wounded two people and damaged an ambulance, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The ministry said the Israeli military struck again when rescuers from the Risala Scouts Association reached the scene, while Lebanon’s civil defence said its personnel were targeted by an Israeli drone strike as they worked to extinguish a bushfire in the Nabatieh area. No one was wounded in that drone strike.
Those clashes sit inside a wider confrontation that has already pulled Lebanon deeper into the Middle East war. In March, Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the conflict with rocket fire at Israel in support of Iran, and Israel responded with heavy air strikes and a ground invasion that Lebanon says have killed more than 4,300 people. Against that backdrop, Asif’s talk of a possible deal stands out not because the violence has stopped, but because it has not.
What remains unclear is how far the reported U.S.-Iran arrangement would go or what terms it would include. For now, the sharper reading is that mediation is still alive, but it is running alongside maritime attacks and fresh strikes on land, not ahead of them.
