Examining the Mistrust Between Iran & Pakistan

Bound by geography and divided by history, the two Islamic Republics remain uneasy neighbors.

When tensions escalated between the Iranians and the Israelis/Americans after Israel launched its “Operation Rising Lion” on June 13, 2025, the Pakistanis were quick to issue statements in solidarity with Iran. However, there remains fundamental mistrust between the two Islamic Republics, making the relationship a modus vivendi with a “cold peace.”

Sunni and Shia Overview

Iran and Pakistan have deep cultural ties, as Pakistan was part of the Persian-speaking Mughal Empire, and Shias make up 15-20% of its population. There are even rumors that the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, was born a Shia but later became a Sunni.

Sunni and Shia are Islam’s two main sects that emerged after Mohammed’s death in the 7th century. The Shia, which means the party of Ali, believed that direct descendants of Mohammed should be the successors, and supported Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, to be the next caliph. The Sunnis argued that it should be from the community and supported Abu Bakr as the next caliph.

Most Muslim countries today are predominantly Sunni, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan. The countries with a majority Shia population are Iran, Bahrain, Iraq, and Azerbaijan, while there are sizable minorities in Lebanon, Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. According to some estimates, India has the second-largest Shia community by population, after Iran.

The West often frames the Sunni/Shia schism as this “ancient hatred.” While tensions between the sects predate Western colonialism, these differences were manipulated by the Safavid Shahs, Ottoman Sultans, and other rulers for political gain. Importantly, the media narrative of Sunnis and Shias engaging in “revenge attacks” against one another is a modern phenomenon that emerged in the late 20th century, and it was fueled by political actors and extremist ideologues who weaponized these sectarian differences for political power.

As Lebanese journalist Kim Ghattas, author of the book “Black Wave … ,” said on Fareed Zakaria GPS in February 2020, Sunnis and Shias killed each other less than Catholics and Protestants throughout history.

The Shah Years

Following the creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on August 14, 1947, Iran was the first country to recognize it. From the 1950s, relations between Iran and Pakistan were cordial, as both countries were part of the U.S.-led security alliances, such as CENTO. Given India’s “nonalignment tilt” to the Soviet Union, the Iranians backed Pakistan during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistan Wars.

There is a common narrative that Iran-Pakistan relations nosedived after the Iranian Revolution. However, according to Alex Vatanka in his book “Iran and Pakistan: Security, Diplomacy and American Influence,” tensions emerged before the revolution.

The OPEC oil embargo of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War monumentally increased Iran’s oil revenue, spurring Iranian ambitions and influencing the Shah to pursue a more “independent” foreign policy. The new direction entailed normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1971 and pursuing détente with the Soviet Union. Consequently, it was in Iran’s interest to improve relations with India, seeing them as the regional hegemon after the 1971 war, and from this point on, Iran became “neutral” in the India-Pakistan conflict. Angered by the Shah’s neutrality, the Pakistanis then turned to the Arab countries.

Khomeini’s Revolution and Pakistan’s Pivot to Saudi Arabia

The fall of the Shah after the 1979 Iranian Revolution accelerated tensions between Iran and Pakistan. It replaced a “pro-American” Shah with a virulently anti-American Islamic Republic, and its raison d’être has been to “resist” the United States in the Middle East. Even though Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini emphasized the pan-Islamic nature of the revolution, it started to turn sectarian when Khomeini challenged Saudi leadership in the Islamic World.

With the rise of revolutionary Iran, Pakistan deepened its relationship with the Gulf Arabs, particularly Saudi Arabia, to support the country in its conflict against India. The closeness of the Saudi-Pakistani relationship played out when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. In response, the Saudis and the Pakistanis (along with the Americans and the Chinese) supported the Afghan Mujahideen, with factions ranging from religiously fanatical Salafis to left-wing Maoists.

Importantly, under Pakistan’s military dictator Zia ul-Haq, the country implemented very conservative religious policies, such as Islamizing the school curriculum, appointing clerics to make judicial decisions, and constructing religious seminaries across the country. However, many of these religious seminaries received significant Saudi money and taught (and still teach) the Saudi-inspired form of Wahhabism.

Wahhabism, a form of Salafism, is an extremely puritanical interpretation of Islam that developed during the 18th century by Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab in what is today Saudi Arabia. It is this branch that doesn’t consider the Shia to be Muslims or even other Muslims to be Muslim who disagree with their views. It is also the ideological foundation for groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other extremely radical and fringe Sunni Islamic movements.

Growing Tensions

The influx of Saudi money and Zia’s policies led to a significant uptick in radical Sunni Islamist parties, such as Ahl-e-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat and Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, throughout Pakistan, preaching anti-Shia violence and stirring up sectarian tensions. This one Sunni group that received Saudi money, “called for legally declaring Shias as being outside the pale of Islam.”

The rise of anti-Shia violence in Pakistan has at times clashed with Iran, since the Islamic Republic has championed itself as the protector of persecuted Shias worldwide. For example, in 1986, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called on the Iranian government to protect Pakistani Shias. During the 1990s, the Iranians started to fund Shia groups, such as Sipah-e-Mohammad, which exacerbated sectarian tensions within the country. And, like the Saudis, the Iranian government funded religious seminaries to propagate their ideology.

In 1998, the Taliban murdered eight Iranian diplomats and one journalist in their consulate in the city of Mazari-Sharif, Afghanistan. This incident caused immense uproar within Iran and nearly resulted in Iran going to war with the Taliban. Crucially, some in Iran alleged that it was the Pakistanis who ordered the Taliban to conduct this heinous act.

Later, during the civil war in Syria, the Iranian government recruited and trained Pakistani Shia militias, such as the Pakistani Zeinabiyoun Brigade, to fight on the Assad regime’s side. Eventually, in April 2024, the Pakistani government banned this group, arguing that it “is engaged in certain activities which are prejudicial to the peace and security.”

On top of these incidents, in 2016, the Pakistanis accused the Iranians of being complicit in allowing an “Indian spy,” Kulbhushan Jadhav, to operate from the Iranian province of Sistan and Balochestan. However, the Indians insist that he was not a spy.

Eventually, the tensions between Iran and Pakistan escalated into outright military tit for tat in January 2024 when the Iranians conducted targeted airstrikes in Pakistan against Jaish ul-Adl, a Baloch Sunni terrorist group that has been responsible for many terrorist attacks in Iran.

On many occasions, the Iranians argued that Pakistan was either complicit in the attacks or not doing enough to rein them in. In response, the Pakistanis launched retaliatory strikes, which they said were targeting the Baluchistan Liberation Army and the Baluchistan Liberation Front in Iran. The Baloch groups have targeted Pakistanis in the past, and Islamabad has accused Tehran of not doing enough to rein them in.

More recently, despite Pakistani statements condemning the Americans and Israelis during the 12-Day War, reports circulated that the Pakistanis may have allowed the Americans to use their airspace to attack the Iranian nuclear sites, which Pakistan has denied. The mere fact that this report circulated is indicative of the extreme mistrust between Tehran and Islamabad.

The “Cold Peace”

What has kept the “cold peace” between these two Islamic Republics in an environment of mutual distrust is doing the minimum to ensure that tensions don’t boil over to a larger military conflict.

As a result, any “cooperation” between the Iranians and Pakistanis has generally been limited to border security to counter the Baloch insurgency, which is a threat to Tehran and Islamabad. Beyond that, there is not much “cooperation” between Iran and Pakistan, not even trade. The Iranians trade more with Armenia annually than with Pakistan.

So far, neither side is politically interested in expanding the relationship beyond this, primarily because the two governments have different priorities. The Iranians have devoted much more attention and resources to the Middle East and its conflict with the Israelis and would rather not think about Pakistan. Likewise, the Pakistanis have been preoccupied with fighting the Indians and maintaining “strategic depth” in Afghanistan; they would not like to start a third front with the Iranians.

Hypothetically, even if a grassroots Iranian opposition movement removed the Islamic Republic and installed a secular democracy, the relationship between Pakistan and Iran is unlikely to change. For a post-Islamic Republic Iran, an economically vibrant India is much more valuable than an economically bankrupt Pakistan.

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The views and information contained in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Asia Cable.