In the tense days following a terrorist attack in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir last year, Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Syed Asim Munir, found himself at the center of an international crisis.
Arab monarchs and Western leaders urged Pakistan’s most powerful man to refrain from retaliating for a looming Indian attack on militant groups within Pakistan, according to Anwaar Ul Haq Kakar, a former caretaker prime minister and Munir ally.
New Delhi had blamed Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups, known to be active in Kashmir for decades, for the April 22, 2025, attack that resulted in the deaths of 26 tourists. Islamabad denied any involvement.
Munir did not back down, said Kakar. The 58-year-old general put the country’s forces on high alert.
In the early hours of May 7, 2025, the two neighbors engaged in their most significant military confrontation in decades. India used fighter jets to hit militant bases it blamed for the attack in Kashmir, a Himalayan region they have fought three wars over. Both control parts of Kashmir but claim it in full.
Munir oversaw Pakistan’s rapid response, ordering the downing of any Indian aircraft involved in firing weapons at Pakistan, according to Kakar. New Delhi reportedly lost several aircraft, including at least one advanced French Rafale fighter jet.
Expanding Ambitions
The four-day conflict, which ended with a ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump, transformed Munir’s standing at home.
Weeks later, Pakistan’s pliant civilian cabinet elevated General Munir to the rank of Field Marshal. By the end of the year, through a constitutional amendment, he had solidified his power as the Chief of Defense Forces, cementing his control over the country’s growing nuclear arsenal and its political future. His new post came with a longer term in office, fewer checks on his power, and lifelong immunity.
It turns out, however, that Munir’s ambitions go even farther than pushing back against India and consolidating his own power at home. Over the past two years, he has worked to dramatically elevate Pakistan’s security and diplomatic role in the Middle East.
Under his leadership, Islamabad has moved away from its perpetual rivalry with India. He has pursued diplomacy, alliance-building, and defense exports in the Persian Gulf and the wider region, striving to transform his cash-strapped nation into a Middle East power broker.
This ambition has raised Pakistan’s international stature and deflected attention from rising domestic insecurity within the Muslim nation of 250 million. It has also raised questions about whether a country struggling with violent insurgencies, chronic political divisions, and an ailing economy can effectively project power beyond South Asia.
Kakar says Munir’s foremost quality is having a plan to realize his ambitions. “He is looking for a dignified position for Pakistan in the international community of nations,” he said.
Saudi Partnership
Munir’s most ambitious undertaking in the Middle East has been his effort to transform a decades-old relationship with Saudi Arabia into a formal mutual defense alliance in 2025, which requires both sides to consider that “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both.”
His quest to push his country into the Middle East appears to owe much to his stint as a defense attaché in Riyadh in the early 2000s.
Ayesha Siddiqa, a political scientist and Pakistan security expert at King’s College London, believes Munir is an Islamist who, akin to the Saudi rulers, aims to not only control but also define Islamism. “He frequently cites Quranic verses in his speeches and pretends that God has ordained him to give direction to Pakistan,” she said.
Siddiqa warns that Munir’s ambitions might ensnare Islamabad in the escalating rivalries of the Middle East. She told MBN that by committing itself to Saudi security, Islamabad cannot remain neutral in an “extremely complex and very factionalized” region. “If you get embroiled in these factional fights, it’s going to have implications for Pakistan, with no clear signs of what the benefits are going to be,” she said.
There are already signs of a backlash for Islamabad.
In an apparent snub in response to Pakistan’s mediation role in the Iran war, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deported thousands of Pakistanis. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have also found themselves at odds, giving the UAE more reasons to squeeze Islamabad. In March, Abu Dhabi unexpectedly asked Islamabad to pay back $3.5 billion it had borrowed to bolster its foreign currency reserves. In April Islamabad paid back the money with Saudi help.
Islamabad has already deployed 8,000 troops, a fleet of fighter aircraft, and air defense systems to Saudi Arabia. These forces are reportedly ready to support the Saudi military in combat.
Riyadh has conducted secret retaliatory attacks on Iran for attacks on its soil. This raises the possibility that Islamabad may one day find itself fighting Tehran, with whom it shares a 550-mile-long land border, on behalf of the Saudis.
So far, Field Marshal Munir has quietly steered Islamabad away from participating in the Iran war on Riyadh’s behalf by serving as the key mediator between Iran and the United States.
Field Marshal Asim Munir meeting the Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in Tehran in April.
After brokering a ceasefire between the two countries in early April, Munir hosted the highest-level direct contact between them since the Iranian Revolution in 1979 led to a rupture of diplomatic relations. During the war that has overshadowed the global economy, Munir became the only world leader to boast direct access to the White House as well as the rulers of Iran.
By cultivating a close relationship with Trump, Munir has succeeded where many have failed. Trump has repeatedly called Munir his favorite field marshal and consulted him on major new initiatives in the region.
Munir has also set Islamabad on course to assume a prominent role in the Middle East’s security architecture. Building on the joint defense pact between Riyadh and Islamabad, discussions have taken place among Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey to create “a new regional security platform centered on cooperation and stability.”
This emerging Sunni alliance has the potential to become a major bloc in the Middle East, with long-term implications for other regional powers like Iran and Israel. Pakistan’s quest for influence in the Middle East has already pushed rival India to strengthen its partnership with the UAE and Israel.
Experts warn that this strategy carries substantial risks. “This is a huge gamble. It could involve Pakistan in a full-scale regional war,” said Farzana Shaikh, a Pakistan specialist at the Chatham House think tank in London. “The whole modus operandi of Munir’s conduct is recklessness – immense recklessness.”
Shaikh noted that previous Pakistani governments had resisted Saudi pressure to engage in its conflicts. In 2015, Pakistani lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected a Saudi proposal for participating in its war against the Houthis in neighboring Yemen, who are allies of Iran.
Cash-strapped Islamabad relies on some $20 billion in annual remittances from over four million Pakistanis working in the Gulf, primarily Saudi Arabia. Experts warn that worsening relations with the UAE could be catastrophic if it restricts work and investment opportunities for Pakistanis. “It could cripple Pakistan’s economy,” said Shaikh.
Siddiqa even questions the very narrative that Islamabad is benefiting from its growing footprint in the Middle East in partnership with Saudi Arabia. “We still are not sure what these benefits are,” she said.
Economic Opportunities
But Shuja Nawaz, author of a book on the Pakistani military, sees Munir and the military he leads as primarily pursuing economic interests as they attempt to make Pakistan a power in the Middle East.
Field Marshal Asim Munir gestures during an event in Islamabad in early April.
He told MBN that Islamabad aims to boost its defense exports, seeing a lucrative opportunity to earn billions of dollars from sales in the region. Saudi Arabia has shown interest in acquiring JF17 fighter jets, which Pakistan assembles with Chinese components and is already selling to Nigeria, Azerbaijan, and Myanmar.
In April, Islamabad put a $1.5 billion arms deal with Sudan on hold after Riyadh rescinded its financing. In March, Pakistan delivered five planeloads of armaments to Libya’s eastern government led by military ruler Khalifa Haftar. Munir visited Benghazi in December, reportedly concluding a $4 billion deal with Haftar. The Libyan strongman visited Islamabad in February. Pakistan will supply Haftar’s forces with 16 JF-17 aircraft, 12 Super Mushshak military trainer aircraft, and equipment for air, land and naval forces.
“The provision of security to other states comes from Pakistan not only having a very large military, but also being a nuclear power,” said Nawaz. “Provision of the defense umbrella that includes nuclear power is something that is only available to one other country in that region, which is Israel.”
Domestic Fragility
Shaikh, however, says that Islamabad’s Middle East ambitions are overshadowed by its domestic vulnerabilities. She sees Munir struggling with the two increasingly violent insurgencies along its western border with Afghanistan.
The two neighbors have been locked in a simmering war since October. Despite the Pakistani military’s central role in enabling the Islamist Taliban to return to power in Afghanistan after the final U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the Taliban soon redefined itself as an enemy of Islamabad.
“Pakistan is a country at war not just domestically, but in its immediate neighborhood,” Shaikh said, referring to the two violent insurgencies that have killed hundreds of soldiers, rebels and civilians in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan this year. “The pretense that it can be a so-called net security provider when it can’t provide security at home fools nobody.”
Like previous military rulers, experts believe Munir is seeking legitimacy by pursuing a prominent international role. Before Munir took control over the military in late 2022, Pakistani military leaders had publicly pledged to remain out of politics.
Munir, by contrast, quickly asserted a political role soon after solidifying his hold on the military bureaucracy. He sidelined his main rival, former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Some protests against Khan’s initial arrest in May 2023 turned into riots, and ended with the torching of the official residence of a senior army general and other government installations.
Since then, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf political party has faced the wrath of the military. Khan has been imprisoned since August 2023, and his followers have been subjected to a wide-ranging campaign of persecution. His party says it was deprived of power in a rigged parliamentary election in 2024 that resulted in a weak civilian administration led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The constitutional head, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, often praises Munir in public and defers to his initiatives. Under their leadership, civil liberties, press freedom, political parties, and democracy have sharply declined.
Siddiqa, the author of a bestseller on the Pakistani military’s economic empire, says that under Munir, Pakistan has moved towards constitutional militarism. “There is parliamentary democracy, but the actual control of politics, governance, economy, and policy rests with the military,” she said.
Siddiqa argues that Munir’s heavy-handed use of coercion, which is characteristic of military rulers in dealing with internal security challenges and dissent, has not been beneficial. She sees Munir monopolizing more power even as he leads Pakistan toward a more prominent role in the Middle East.
“He will take his institution and the country into a dark alley, much like previous dictators did,” she warned.
Abubakar Siddique
Abubakar Siddique is a journalist and author focused on the broader geopolitical landscape of South Asia and the Middle East.
