Pezeshkian

Agreements, including those for the energy and trade sectors, have been signed during the two-day visit of the Iranian president.

Pakistan and Iran have signed agreements pledging to raise bilateral trade to $10bn and committing to work more closely to eliminate the menace of “terrorism” in favour of peace and prosperity in the region, as both nations have recently been embroiled in conflicts with their respective regional foes.

Sunday’s agreements across various sectors, including energy and trade, were signed during the two-day visit of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

“We have set a target of $10bn in trade and hope to achieve it as soon as possible,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said, addressing a joint press briefing.

Sharif reiterated Pakistan’s stance of supporting Iran’s right to a nuclear programme for peaceful purposes under the United Nations charter and condemned Israel’s aggression against Iran, saying there was “no justification” for the 12-day June conflict in which the United States militarily intervened on Israel’s behalf.

He said the two countries would take effective steps to eliminate “terrorism” and open the avenues of prosperity in the region. Pakistan and regional rival India were on the cusp of their fifth all-out war earlier this year before a ceasefire ended several days of heavy and deadly aerial exchanges.

The Iranian president said, “My deep belief is that we can easily, in a short time, increase the volume of our trade relations from the current $3bn to the projected goal of $10bn.”

He thanked the government and people supporting Iran “during the 12-day terrorist aggression by the Zionist regime and the United States”.

Analyst Ammar Habib Khan of the Institute of Business Administration told Al Jazeera that the informal trade between Iran and Pakistan is likely to increase more than the formal trade target shared by the countries.

“Discussions have been held on how to formalise the informal trade that is already happening, whether it is oil, gas or something else,” he told Al Jazeera from Karachi.

The analyst said Pakistan’s normalising relations with Iran might lead to the creation of a trade route between Pakistan and Europe.

“It would be an efficient and logistically sound route,” he said.

Along with a high-level delegation, including foreign and defence ministers, Pezeshkian arrived on a two-day visit to Pakistan on Saturday.

Tense ties

Pezeshkian called for better border management and cooperation around the mutual border to counter security threats.

In return, Sharif said that Islamabad and Tehran have a common stand against “terrorism”, and no such activity would be allowed in Pakistan or Iran.

“We have to protect our borders and take strict steps against terrorism to open the roads to peace and development in the region,” said Sharif.

Relations between Pakistan and Iran have often been shaky, especially over cross-border tensions that escalated in January 2024 when both sides launched tit-for-tat missile strikes.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said Pakistan and Iran have agreed to cooperate in order to ensure violence is prevented on either side.

“They agreed to have more border management between the two countries,” he said.

Hyder added that the sides also discussed Pakistan acting as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran, among other countries trying to ease tensions between archenemies.

Despite the strains, the two countries have kept the diplomatic door open.

In May, the Iranian foreign minister visited Pakistan amid rising tensions with India. During the Iran-Israel conflict, Pakistan supported Iran’s right to self-defence and condemned the US attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The leaders of Pakistan and Iran also called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Israel’s attacks in the enclave.

The two sides also inked a string of memorandums of understanding in the fields of information technology, law and justice, climate change, and tourism.

Iranian president says neither Qatar nor its people were targets of attack on US base in the gas-rich Gulf nation.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has expressed his “regret” to Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani over Tehran’s missile attack on a US base on Monday.

In a phone call on Tuesday with the emir, Pezeshkian noted that neither Qatar nor its population were the target of the attack on the Al Udeid Air Base, the United States base in Qatar, and that it did “not represent a threat” to the Gulf nation, the Diwan (emir’s office) said in a statement.

“[Pezeshkian] stressed that the State of Qatar will remain a neighbouring, Muslim, and sisterly state, and expressed his hope that relations between the two countries will always be based on the principles of respect for the sovereignty of states and good neighbourliness,” the statement said.

Iran launched 19 missiles at the US base, which is the largest in the Middle East, with Qatari defence forces intercepting 18 of them, according to officials from the Ministry of Interior. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had launched this “powerful and devastating missile attack” in response to the “blatant military aggression” by the US on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Sunday.

سمو الأمير المفدى يتلقى اتصالاً هاتفياً من فخامة الرئيس الدكتور مسعود بزشكيان رئيس الجمهورية الإسلامية الإيرانية. https://t.co/xrn7hpCfPR

— الديوان الأميري (@AmiriDiwan) June 24, 2025

Translation: His Highness the Emir receives a phone call from His Excellency Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

During the Iranian attack, a series of flares and loud explosions were observed in Qatar’s capital, Doha, as well as other areas of the country. Qatari officials confirmed that the airbase was evacuated before the attack.

According to the Diwan, the emir “reiterated Qatar’s strong condemnation” of the attack, considering it a “flagrant violation of its sovereignty and airspace”.

“His Highness the Emir also expressed that this violation is completely inconsistent with the principle of good neighbourliness and the close relations between the two countries, especially since Qatar has always been an advocate of dialogue with Iran and has made strenuous diplomatic efforts in this regard,” the statement added.

Iran and Qatar have long enjoyed fraternal relations, and the Qatari government has condemned both the Israeli and US attacks on Iran. But Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani spoke at a news conference on Tuesday of a “scar” to relations between Doha and Tehran that would need time to heal.

Earlier on Tuesday, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said it sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council, denouncing the IRGC’s “extremely dangerous escalation” and saying the attack posed a “direct threat to regional peace and security”.

The tit-for-tat attacks between the US and Iran come amidst the conflict between Israel and Iran, which began on June 13, after the Israeli army struck multiple targets inside Iran.

Hours after the attack on the Al Udeid Air Base, US President Donald Trump announced late on Monday that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire. Nevertheless, both countries have accused each other of violating the truce.

Iran’s president says his nation will not be intimidated by threats as Trump accuses Tehran of carrying out proxy wars.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country would not “bow to any bully” in response to United States President Donald Trump’s criticism of Tehran during his ongoing three-day Gulf tour.

“He [Trump] thinks he can come here, chant slogans, and scare us. For us, martyrdom is far sweeter than dying in bed. You came to frighten us? We will not bow to any bully,” he said on Wednesday in comments broadcast live on state TV.

Earlier in the day, during the GCC summit in Riyadh, Trump said that while he wanted to make a deal with Iran, the country “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons”.

Washington and Tehran have held four meetings that were mediated by Oman to help reach a deal over the latter’s nuclear programme.

While attending a state dinner in the Qatari capital in Doha on Wednesday, Trump repeated his publicly stated desire for a peaceful resolution to Iran’s nuclear programme and suggested the ball is in Tehran’s court.

“It’s a perilous situation, and we want to do the right thing,” Trump said. “We want to do something that’s going to save maybe millions of lives. Because things like that get started, and they get out of control.”

On Tuesday, Trump said that he wanted “to make a deal with Iran”, but “if Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch … we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure”. He added that he would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

Successive US administrations have sought to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. A sustained effort by world powers during the Barack Obama administration culminated in a 2015 agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

But when Trump succeeded Obama as US president, he unilaterally withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement in 2018, causing the deal to crumble.

Despite ongoing talks, the Trump administration has continued to impose sanctions on Iran.

On Wednesday, the US issued sanctions targeting Iran for efforts to domestically manufacture components for ballistic missiles, the US Department of the Treasury said.

The sanctions target six individuals and 12 entities for what the Treasury Department said was “their involvement in efforts to help the Iranian regime domestically source the manufacturing of critical materials needed for Tehran’s ballistic missile program”.