Stepping off a plane on Wednesday evening, Field Marshal Asim Munir walked straight into the warm embrace of Iran’s foreign minister and chief negotiator, Abbas Araghchi. Dressed in full army fatigues, the powerful chief of Pakistan’s military cut an unusual figure as a beacon for peace. Yet that was just the role he intended to play.

Munir had rushed to Tehran in what many saw as a last-ditch attempt to revive Pakistan’s efforts to mediate an end to the war between the US and Iran. Four days earlier, the US vice-president, JD Vance, left Islamabad, after more than 21 hours of talks between the US and Iran failed to broker a deal.

But even as the US president, Donald Trump, quickly lashed out, imposing a naval blockade on the strait of Hormuz that risked escalating the war, he also praised Munir’s “fantastic” efforts in continuing negotiations between the two sides. On Wednesday night, the army chief arrived in Tehran with a new proposal from Washington of a framework for a fresh round of talks in Islamabad next week.

Pakistan has emerged as an unlikely diplomatic broker between Iran and the US, and Munir is widely seen as a key driving force. Pakistan’s army chief was one of the few able to get the US and Iranian leadership on the phone, passing along messages as a trusted intermediary to both sides. It is widely acknowledged that the negotiations have been coordinated from Rawalpindi, the seat of the army, rather than Islamabad, the seat of the parliament.

“Field Marshal Munir is the driving force – without him this would not work,” said Maleeha Lodhi, who served as Pakistan’s former ambassador to the UN, US and UK.

“The foreign ministry is just a junior partner. Countries like Iran and the US have this confidence in Asim Munir. Our government ministers are really an adjunct.”

It was Munir’s phone calls that led the frantic international efforts last week, which resulted in a last-minute ceasefire agreement after Trump’s threat that Iran’s civilisation would “die” if they did not agree to a deal. Trump is said to have directly leaned on Munir to use his influence and knowledge of the Iranians to help reach the off-ramp. And when the US and Iranian delegations met in Islamabad on Saturday, Munir was the third party in the room.

This week, Munir travelled to Iran as the critical messenger and negotiator, while Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, took a diplomatic trip to Saudi Arabia to shore up regional support for the country’s peacemaking efforts.

Analysts have emphasised that it is not unusual for Pakistan’s army chief – an unelected, yet overwhelmingly powerful position – to shape the country’s foreign policy and to be the face of foreign engagements, even when civilian governments are supposedly in charge. US presidents have long preferred dealing with Pakistan’s military leaders rather than their democratically elected ones.

Yet Munir was not always an obvious international statesman, say experts. After his appointment in 2022, his focus was largely on domestic issues, including a crushing of the country’s political opposition and orchestrating an unprecedented concentration of his own power within Pakistan.

However, over the past year and a half, he has pushed himself as a global ambassador, cultivating strong relationships in Washington, Riyadh and Tehran. By the end of 2025, he had visited the White House twice, overseen US-Pakistani deals on crypto and mineral mining and signed a defence pact with Saudi Arabia.

“He’s been very good at building relationships with leaders and countries through frequent visits and communication,” said Lodhi. “He’s not laid-back. He’s not somebody who’s going to wait for a call. As we’ve seen in his diplomatic activism, he’ll pick up the phone himself.”

Crucial to Munir’s current clout as a trusted intermediary was his part in rebuilding US-Pakistani relationships during the second Trump administration, through a combination of strategic wins, lobbying, flattery and deals. He gave Trump an early victory by handing him several high-profile terrorists who were extradited to the US.

Then, when the US intervened in the rising hostilities between India and Pakistan in May 2025, Pakistan effusively thanked Trump and even went on to nominate him for the Nobel peace prize. Munir successfully managed to claim victory in that conflict, further elevating his position domestically and internationally.

Two months later, and after more than $5m (£3.7m) spent by Pakistan on Washington lobbyists, Munir was invited to the White House for a private lunch. He appeared to charm the US president with a combination of flattery and lucrative investment opportunities in Pakistan, ranging from oil to minerals and crypto.

Trump liked Munir so much he was formally invited back to the Oval Office within months. The president showered him with gushing praise, calling him an “exceptional man”, a “greater fighter” and “my favourite field marshal”.

Munir is also well versed in communicating with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. While relations between Islamabad and Tehran were shaky after cross-border strikes in January 2024, much goodwill was rebuilt last year, after Pakistan’s unequivocal condemnation of Israel, first over its actions in Gaza and then for its bombing of Iran during the 10-day war. Public sentiment in Pakistan remains overwhelmingly pro-Iran, even among Sunni Muslims.

As Avinash Paliwal, a reader in international relations at Soas University of London, describes it, Munir had “been dealt a bad hand but played it very well”, particularly in his agile handling of the Trump administration and his understanding of the importance of personality-driven diplomacy.

“The personalised, centralised system under the command of Field Marshal Munir allows Pakistan that degree of flexibility to play the role of the mediator here with a degree of credibility,” said Paliwal.

Nonetheless, Paliwal is among those who cautions against giving too much credit to one man for Pakistan’s wide-ranging diplomatic campaign, in which key government ministers have flown to China, Saudi and Turkey to push for the deal on all sides.

Muhammad Mehdi, a political analyst, said: “Munir has been at the forefront, but this has been a collective effort and many sides, in government and in military, have had a role to play.”

As analysts emphasise, much rides on the success of these talks, for Munir personally as well as for Pakistan’s push to be seen internationally as a credible diplomatic interlocutor, with enough clout to push Iran and the US towards a deal that seemed impossible just a few weeks ago. But most pressing of all for the military and the government is the urgent need to end a war that risks further economic and security devastation in Pakistan if it drags on any longer.

Even if a deal were struck to end the conflict, Paliwal says it is unlikely that Munir’s role would end there. As a result, Pakistan could emerge as a major operational player in maintaining peace in the Gulf and the Middle East.

“This is a man who feels that, moving forward, he will have a much stronger role to play in whatever security architecture develops in the Middle East,” said Paliwal. “Pakistan now is absolutely central to peace-building. For Munir, this is about building a global story.”