Pakistan allowed Iran to shelter military aircraft — including, per US officials, an Iranian Air Force RC-130 reconnaissance aircraft — at Nur Khan Air Base near Rawalpindi in the days following the US strikes, according to American officials with knowledge of the matter cited by CBS News. A separately reported Mahan Air civilian aircraft was identified in Kabul. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry denied the allegations, describing them as completely false, and said any aircraft movements were tied to diplomatic and logistical arrangements for the Islamabad talks. [1]

The paper's Wednesday brief on Pakistan betting that Trump wants Beijing quiet framed Islamabad's mediation position as a high-stakes bet. The aircraft report changes the bet's odds. Pakistan was asking Washington to trust its neutrality while, if the CBS account holds, providing Iranian military assets cover from US strikes. The contradiction is structural, not incidental. A mediator that shields one party's military hardware from the other party's strikes is not a mediator in any conventional sense. [1]

Senator Lindsey Graham, responding to the report, said that if accurate it would require a complete re-evaluation of the role Pakistan is playing. [2] That framing understates the problem. Pakistan's value to the US in the Islamabad channel rests entirely on the premise that Islamabad treats both sides equally. The aircraft story, if confirmed, means Iran knew that premise was fiction. What Iran gains from that knowledge — and what it told Tehran about how far to push in negotiations — is the question no official statement addresses. Pakistan's denial and the US account cannot both be true. One of them will hold.

-- PRIYA SHARMA, Delhi