A silent meeting, resounding questions: Trump, the Field Marshal, and Pakistan’s future — who is next after Iran?
By: Raja Zahid Akhtar Khanzada
An extraordinary event took place in the quiet corridors of the White House on June 12, 2025. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, not only granted an audience to Pakistan’s most powerful military figure, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, but hosted a White House lunch for him an honor never before extended to any Pakistani military official who wasn’t head of state. No statement was issued, no photographs released, just a closed door and echoes of questions now resonating across the global stage: Why did Trump call him? What did General Asim Munir ask for? What did Pakistan give away?
In this context, the mind stumbles through corridors of the past an era when the fate of the world rested in the hands of a few faces. One of those faces was Henry Kissinger, the cunning architect of American diplomacy, whose eyes often spoke more than his tongue. From Vietnam to Beijing, he moved civilizations like pieces on a chessboard, aligning power more with opportunism than principle. He once uttered a line one that became not just part of diplomatic lexicon, but a mark of humiliation on the foreheads of weaker nations: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but being its friend is even more dangerous, for it can cost you your life.”
That very sentence now breathes in the air of Pakistan. It is a reverberation that travels from Rawalpindi to Islamabad and from there to the closed doors of Washington. The same America that, just seven years ago, had labeled Pakistan “a den of lies and deceit,” now seats that same Pakistan at the White House table to thank it for the capture of the alleged perpetrator of the Abbey Gate bombing.
But… was this “thank you” a token of pure friendship? Or was it an advance payment? Is Pakistan now being pushed into a war against Iran, one that is not ours but a battle rooted in someone else’s history and interests? This question is far more dangerous than the roar of Israeli missiles or Iran’s retaliatory strikes. For if this question goes unanswered, then perhaps the next page of history will be written without the name of Pakistan.
Trump admitted in front of the media: “I stopped a potential nuclear war between Pakistan and India.” He claimed General Asim Munir held Pakistan back from war, while Modi restrained India. These claims may not be shocking, but they do reveal one stark truth: where does the real power lie in Islamabad’s Parliament or in Rawalpindi’s offices?
And if a military chief meets directly with the President of the United States, where does that leave the weight of democracy? When Israel is striking Iranian cities, when Tel Aviv is targeting Iranian nuclear scientists, and when Iran is responding with drones and missiles at such a moment, Pakistan is being expected to cross its borders and fight someone else’s war.
China, which has become the backbone of Pakistan’s military and economy should we now sacrifice that friendship for a fleeting American smile? Iran, which has always upheld the right of neighborliness—shall we now stand against it, just for the sake of a “technical romance,” as Western media has called it?
There was another silent figure present in this meeting: Imran Khan. Though his body is imprisoned, his name echoes in every room where the nation’s fate is discussed. That very silence can give birth to another Iran—where awakened eyes of the people knock on every door of power, demanding answers.
Donald Trump is no ordinary politician. He is a businessman president, for whom global politics is a marketplace of transactions. His policies are less about consistency and more about making a deal. In 2018, Trump cut off aid to Pakistan. Then he invited Imran Khan to the White House. He struck a deal with the Taliban, then unilaterally decided to withdraw. Against this backdrop, Imran Khan’s silence feels like a heavy breath he may be absent, but his presence is felt in every corner of the country. People still call to him as young Iranians once called to Khomeini from Paris.
Though the truth is that no one has done more to weaken Pakistan’s politicians than Imran Khan himself. Today, not only politics but every institution of society stands hostage no institution is autonomous, and no voice is truly free. So the question now is: can the power of the Field Marshal stand against a flood of public popularity?
Today, it is that same Trump who embraces Pakistan. The real question is: is this embrace a prelude to suffocation?
Pakistan’s foreign policy has always swung between China and the United States, but ties with China have remained relatively constant and longstanding. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is currently the most crucial project within China’s Belt and Road Initiative. China has supported Pakistan’s nuclear program and always stood by it in matters of defense.
Now, if Pakistan joins a military front against Iran at the behest of the United States, it won’t be a conflict with Iran alone it will become a moral and strategic clash with China as well. Iran is already a thorn in the eye of global powers, especially Israel and the United States. If Israel strikes Iran and Pakistan, either directly or indirectly, sides with America or Israel, it will severely damage Pakistan’s credibility within the Shia Muslim world. Instability may spread along the Iranian border. Most importantly, if Iran falls, the West’s attention will inevitably shift to Pakistan’s nuclear assets.
That is why some analysts now claim: after Iran, the next target will be Pakistan’s nuclear program.
Field Marshal Asim Munir, who as ISI Chief had actively dismantled Israeli and Indian networks in the region, knows well how much poison lies hidden in American friendship. If he falls for Trump’s words and joins a coalition against Iran, he will deprive Pakistan of a longstanding neighbor, a great civilization, and a powerful friend. But if he says “no” to the United States, he may have to face renewed pressure—cut-off aid, global isolation, and tools like FATF being reactivated.
The Trump Asim Munir meeting may well open a new chapter, but it will only be a lasting one if Pakistan does not sacrifice its friendship with China and its neighborly ties with Iran. If we join a war against Iran today, these same forces may rise tomorrow to weaken us. We must decide whether we want to say a temporary “yes” and become permanent slaves or choose the path of friendship with dignity.
Amidst all this turmoil, India is not a silent observer. The same India that broke Pakistan in two through the Mukti Bahini in 1971 is now actively working to divide Pakistan again this time through “soft war” in Balochistan, Gilgit, KP, and Sindh. And Israel? Its dream is to eliminate Pakistan’s nuclear program after Iran. Perhaps that was the real agenda behind this “silent lunch.”
This is not poetry. Nor is it fiction. It is a dream harbored for decades by the global establishment etched into the think tanks of Israel. First Iraq, then Syria, then Libya, now Iran and next, Pakistan. The same Pakistan that lit a beacon of hope for the Muslim world in 1998 by becoming a nuclear powernow that very beacon is being targeted for extinguishment.
The position of Field Marshal may be one of great prestige, but when decisions are made behind closed doors, and the nation’s future is written not in Parliament but in military offices, then history does not remain silent.
Today, the nation stands at a crossroads. One path leads to honor, dignity, and awakening the kind we saw in Iran’s revolution, where a nation awoke, stood its ground, and survives to this day with its pride intact. The other path leads to a betrayal of history where a handful of men trade the fate of an entire nation in return for a few deals, a few minerals, and a few crypto councils. Where the people hold nothing in their hands except the right to think.
If this meeting was truly about friendship, then why the lack of transparency? And if something else was decided, when will the nation be told?
We must now ask: will we trade China’s friendship, Iran’s brotherhood, and our own sovereignty for Trump’s artificial smiles? Or will we be the same Pakistan that bled but lived, that sacrificed yet preserved its ideology, and that knows how to honor friendship with dignity, not under the shadow of servitude?
The meeting between Field Marshal and Trump has only given birth to questions. The answers still lie behind veils. But one thing is certain this is not a time for flattery or scripted diplomacy. It is a moment for pride, awareness, and self-respect. We must decide: will we become pawns in someone else’s game, or the architects of our own destiny?
Nations are not destroyed merely behind closed doors. It is when a silent nation forgets to knock on those doors that history buries it forever.
