Economic vulnerability, not abstract peace-making, driving Pakistan’s desperate efforts

Tel Aviv: Pakistan’s push for de-escalation during the West Asia conflict is not “abstract peace-making” but rooted in the country’s economic vulnerability to the energy shocks, with fuel-price hikes demonstrating how quickly external war can translate into domestic pain.

Writing for the ‘Times of Israel’ this week, Sergio Restelli, an Italian political advisor, author and geopolitical expert, noted that as Pakistan grapples with ‘inflation, debt pressure, and chronic political instability’ – a sustained surge in imported energy costs would not just strain the system but could destabilise it.

“For years, South Asia has treated war in the Gulf as a serious but external danger. Oil prices rise, remittances wobble, diplomacy grows tense, and then the region adjusts. This time may be different. A prolonged war centred on Iran does not just threaten the Middle East. It risks redrawing the strategic map of South Asia itself, especially along the already fractured belt that runs from Iran’s eastern frontier through Pakistan’s Balochistan and into Afghanistan,” Restelli detailed.

According to the seasoned analyst, any unrest in West Asia poses a deeper risk for Pakistan’s Western front, given the role of Iran in Islamabad’s security calculus.

“The two countries share a long, restless border cutting through one of the most volatile spaces in the region. On both sides lie under-governed peripheries, smuggling routes, militant networks, and separatist grievances that have never been fully contained.

Iran’s Sistan and Balochistan province has long been one of the Islamic Republic’s most unstable regions, while Pakistan’s Balochistan remains plagued by insurgency and mistrust of the centre. A wider Iran war would pour accelerant on precisely those frontier dynamics that states struggle to control and armed groups know how to exploit,” Restelli mentioned.

Highlighting the broader risks, he further added that amid the worsening ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan, there was a growing risk that both nations could be pushed into a prolonged condition of strategic exhaustion from which recovery becomes harder with every passing year.

“Pakistan could become more dependent on external lenders, more militarised on its western flank, and more brittle internally. Afghanistan could be forced deeper into a cycle of displacement, isolation, and proxy vulnerability. Once such patterns harden, they do not disappear when the shooting stops. They become the new normal,” the expert stated.

Restelli further said, “In that sense, Islamabad’s call for an Iran ceasefire is not simply about calming today’s crisis. It is about preventing the emergence of a new regional order that Pakistan may not survive in any meaningful strategic sense.”