What happened
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will travel to Iran and Türkiye from 3 to 5 July, the Foreign Office said on Thursday 2 July 2026, as Pakistan pressed ahead with its mediation between Washington and Tehran. Foreign Office spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told the weekly media briefing in Islamabad that the prime minister would first go to Iran to attend the funeral of the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated in US-Israeli strikes on 28 February. He will convey condolences on behalf of the people and government of Pakistan and reaffirm solidarity with Iran.
Shehbaz will be accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, cabinet members and senior officials. After Iran he will travel to Istanbul at the invitation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, where the two leaders will discuss the full range of bilateral relations with a focus on trade and investment, as well as regional peace and security, Andrabi said. The prime minister will also address a business conference showcasing Pakistan’s trade and investment potential in special economic zones, energy, trade, information technology and privatisation.
Mediation continues
Pakistan has stepped up its diplomatic engagement with regional and international stakeholders to facilitate the “earnest follow-up and implementation” of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding signed between the United States and Iran on 18 June. Andrabi said the latest round of indirect US-Iran talks in Doha, mediated jointly by Pakistan and Qatar, had made positive progress and continued into Wednesday morning. The two sides agreed to keep diplomatic channels open and to set the next meeting at the earliest possible time after the funeral processions for the former Iranian supreme leader.
The Foreign Office said Dar had held a series of telephone conversations during the week with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, China, Bahrain and Iran, and had separately spoken with the British Foreign Secretary and the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Pakistan has positioned itself as a facilitator in the conflict, and officials have said the dialogue has not broken down despite harsh statements from both principal parties. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian visited Islamabad on 23 June, when the prime minister said Pakistan would keep mediating until a final US-Iran deal. KhabarWire’s account of the electronically signed memorandum set out the framework agreed on 18 June.
Why it matters
The visit places Pakistan at the centre of regional diplomacy at a delicate moment, with the prime minister attending the funeral of a leader killed in a US-Israeli strike while simultaneously shepherding talks between Washington and Tehran. It also advances Pakistan’s economic outreach, pairing the mediation role with a trade mission in Türkiye. The Foreign Office repeated its rejection of what it called India’s attempt to treat the Indus river system as a strategic asset that can be controlled, saying the real issue was not terrorism but the disposition to treat a shared international river system as a tool of coercion.
