UN chief Guterres travels to Pakistan on Tuesday to discuss mediation between the U.S. and Iran

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, will travel to Pakistan this week to discuss Islamabad’s diplomatic and mediation efforts between Iran and the United States, as Al Jazeera reports.

According to the UN announcement, Guterres is expected to arrive in Islamabad on Tuesday to meet senior officials, including Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar. The visit, the announcement says, will be “an opportunity” to discuss Pakistan’s “constructive role” in supporting the negotiations between the two countries.

Pakistan has positioned itself for months as a possible mediator in the U.S.–Iran conflict, while the indirect talks have stalled over the future of the Strait of Hormuz — Tehran says the strait will not reopen until the U.S. meets its seven conditions, while Washington insists on the Iranian nuclear programme.

This is Guterres’s first visit to Pakistan since 2022, when he went there in the midst of devastating floods. Iran, meanwhile, has warned that it will respond more strongly than before to any new American attack, while President Trump has said that the decision on Iran will come “the easy way or the hard way”.