Two days after NDTV published the Vantor satellite image dated April 25 and CBS News named the Iranian RC-130 specifically, Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has issued no further statement beyond Tuesday's denial. [1] Spokesperson Tahir Andrabi's Tuesday briefing called the CBS reporting "misleading and sensationalised" and framed the Iranian aircraft as administrative — supporting diplomatic personnel and security teams during the early Islamabad Talks round. The Vantor image arrived after the statement. The statement has not been updated.
The paper's Thursday feature named what survives: a satellite image dated April 25, presidential backing of Pakistan as mediator, a foreign-ministry denial that acknowledges Iranian aircraft are in Pakistan but disputes their purpose, and a single US senator — Lindsey Graham — calling for reassessment of the mediator. As of Thursday afternoon, no second Republican senator has publicly endorsed Graham's call. [2] Senate Majority Leader John Thune has not spoken to the issue. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch has not commented. Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker has not commented. Tom Cotton, often willing to break with party on Pakistan-related sanctions, has not spoken to the issue. The reassessment is one Republican senator's position.
The Democratic side has been quieter than the Tuesday hearing's structure would suggest. Senator Patty Murray called the Pentagon's $29 billion Iran war estimate "suspiciously low" but did not connect the budget question to the airspace story. Senator Kaine has emphasized AUMF accountability without addressing the Pakistani mediator question. The chamber's record is one Republican demanding reassessment of an ally; one Republican administration defending the same ally; both parties absorbing the satellite image without naming a procedural response.
The pattern recalls the May 13 standard which named the channel as under pressure but not severed. The pressure today is from imagery, not from politics. Pakistan's silence is the price of indispensability. Graham's isolation is the price of a Trump White House that has decided the mediator is more valuable than the relitigation of the mediator. The image will sit on the record. The channel will continue.
-- PRIYA SHARMA, Delhi