Roving Periscope: For a smooth Iran plot, Trump detains, fetes Munir ‘pre-emptively’!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: All governments do it the world over. For a peaceful conduct of a major event, they ‘pre-emptively’ detain miscreants to prevent them from messing up. That’s what Donald Trump may have done before he unveiled his Iran plans: the US invited, then uninvited, Pakistan’s self-proclaimed army chief, “Field Marshal” General Asim Munir, until Trump found time to have “lunch” with him on Wednesday.
Remember, since 2021, no US President has even cared to return a call to a Pakistani Prime Minister—former PM Imran Khan lamented it publicly before Munir safely imprisoned him in August 2023. Why is the same Washington so generous now to Islamabad?
General Munir, whose boastful Pakistani defences and nuclear blackmail crumbled nine like pins in just 23 minutes of India’s lightening Operation Sindoor on May 7, covered the utter shame by adding the “Field Marshal” feather, was hiding in a Washington hotel since he landed there on Sunday, until angry Pakistani diaspora—Imran’s supporters—discovered his location and shouted slogans against this unpopular “Butcher of Pakistan” on Tuesday.
Before his departure from Islamabad, the ISI-controlled media went to town claiming that the US had “invited” Asim Munir as a Guest of Honor to the June 14 parade of the US Army on its 250th anniversary celebrations in Washington DC. Alarmed at this disinformation campaign, the White House dismissed these reports on June 16 as “fake,” and clarified that no foreign guests were invited to the event, to be presided over by Trump.
Then the Pakistani media spinned the fake news again and claimed that Munir was set to meet senior officials of the State Department and the Pentagon. Again, the US did not confirm it, nor did any senior American official met him so far, the media reported on Wednesday.
Then why is General Munir staying in Washington DC for five days?
For two reasons: One, to neutralize him when the US and Israel neutralize Iran; and two, to sour Islamabad’s relations with Beijing and sabotage Pakistan’s plans to buy more defense stuff from China.
Turns out, according to military strategists, he may have been ‘pre-emptively detained’ by the Trump administration in Washington until the US President completed its ‘Mission Iran.’
This plot may well have begun even before India launched Operation Sindoor on May 6, and concretized on May 25 when Pakistani PM Shehbaz Sharif and General Asim Munir went to Tehran to meet Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme Leader” of a Shia-dominated Iran, who has, for years, denounced Israel and the US as the “Great Satans” and vowed to “wipe them out from the face of the planet.”
The US has been softening Pakistan since January when Trump returned to the White House. The IMF handed out yet another bailout to Pakistan on May 9, Trump claimed credit for a ‘ceasefire. This month, General Michael Kurilla, head of US Central Command, hailed what he called a “phenomenal partnership” with Munir’s military in the fight against the Afghanistan-based radical Islamist group ISIS-Khurasan, which the US believes is even more dangerous than al-Qaeda.
Trump has also thanked Pakistan for delivering an ISIS-K member suspected of involvement in a bombing that killed 13 troops during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Clearly, after years of shunning Pakistan, Washington softened Pakistan before taking control of Iran’s air space by June 17. Now, the world is waiting with bated breath when the US ‘cleans up’ Iran of its nuclear arsenal.
Ironically, until only two days ago, Tehran still thought that Pakistan will launch a nuclear attack on Israel if the latter did likewise in Iran.
“Pakistan has assured us that if Israel uses a nuclear bomb on Iran, they will attack Israel with a nuclear bomb,” said General Mohsen Rezae, a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and a member of Iran’s National Security Council, on Monday.
In May itself, Munir had discussed deepening defence ties with Mohammad Bagheri, then-chief of Iran’s general staff who was killed in Israel’s June 13 attack, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The US may also have received this intelligence and decided to ‘detain’ Munir in Washington itself!
Now, Munir cannot leave Washington without Trump’s clearance!
On Tuesday, President Trump abruptly returned to Washington from Canada, leaving the G-7 Summit even before it started. On Wednesday, with Munir enjoying his hospitality, he directly threatened Ayatollah Khameini and Iran!
That’s how things fell in place: the US did not want Munir in Rawalpindi while America and Israel changed the regime in Iran.
But Pakistan continues to claim that Munir’s trip intended to reinforce military and economic ties with the US. His visit ostensibly highlighted Islamabad’s re-warming ties with Washington under Trump, who during his first term (2017-20) suspended military aid to Islamabad over its support for terrorism in Afghanistan but this month praised Pakistan’s “very, very strong leadership”.
Interestingly, Islamabad and Tehran exchanged air strikes early in 2024 against what the two governments said were terrorist groups, mainly the Balochs’ and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
Munir’s US visit is his second since the former ISI chief took over as military chief in 2022, showed “the relationship exists and is important to Washington.”
The US moved swiftly after a Pakistani post on social media site X on June 6, announcing that China had offered to sell it 40 fifth-generation J-35 stealth fighter jets, as well as new radar and air defence systems. The X post was later deleted, but Asim Suleiman, a retired Pakistani air marshal said a deal was in the works for the roughly three dozen aircraft “to likely arrive in 2026.”
If delivered, the J-35s could be the first fifth-generation stealth fighters to be deployed in South Asia.
That would have made Pakistan even more recalcitrant.
