Iran and Pakistan rebuilding diplomatic ties following tit-for-tat strikes

Islamabad and Tehran’s detente should help soothe some concerns of regional escalation from the war in Gaza.

Iran and Pakistan have announced that they will resume diplomatic relations after recently swapping air strikes.

The two Islamic republics will return recalled ambassadors on January 26, they said in a joint statement issued on Monday, with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian to visit his counterpart three days later. The announcement signals efforts to rebuild ties following the tit-for-tat missile attacks on one another’s border regions last week that saw relations nosedive and tensions spike.

The mutual strikes, the highest-profile cross-border intrusions in recent years, targeted what both sides called “terrorist” groups in the regions around their mutual border.

Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) hit the Jaish al-Adl armed group’s locations in the town of Panjgur in Pakistan’s Balochistan province late on Tuesday. Pakistan retaliated by bombing hideouts of armed Baloch separatists in the Sistan-Baluchestan province of Iran early on Thursday. Both regions are restive, mineral-rich and largely underdeveloped.

The attacks saw a swift and sharp deterioration in diplomatic relations between Islamabad and Tehran, with ambassadors withdrawn, official ties severed, and rhetoric raised in tone.