Pakistan has cultivated this status with remarkable consistency across radically different international environments, from Cold War bipolarity through the unipolar post-Cold War moment to today’s emerging multipolar configuration.

The 2026 Iran war represents the latest and perhaps most consequential test of whether the indispensable ally model remains viable in an era of dramatically elevated great power competition and reduced tolerance for strategic ambiguity.

THE ACCESS VACUUM AND PAKISTAN’S GEOGRAPHIC VALUE

The United States entered the 2026 Iran war with a basing access problem unprecedented in its modern military history. Unlike the 2003 Iraq invasion - when the US enjoyed access to bases across the Gulf, Turkey, and the broader region - the current conflict has seen Washington denied operational access by the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (for offensive operations), Turkey, and even the United Kingdom. The US has been compelled to conduct operations primarily from carrier decks and from a narrow set of Israeli and Jordanian facilities.

In this context, the geometric value of Pakistan cannot be overstated. The country’s western airspace - a vast, sparsely monitored expanse stretching from Balochistan to the FATA region - provides direct access to eastern Iran and the northern approaches to the Gulf of Oman. Pakistan’s 1,046-kilometre Arabian Sea coastline, and the naval assets now deployed along it under Operation Muhafiz-ul-Bahr, represent the most capable persistent maritime surveillance platform within operational range of the Strait of Hormuz not currently affiliated with a country that has publicly rejected US basing access.

The allegations of Pakistani airspace being made available for MQ-9B ISR operations and strike asset basing are, against this backdrop, structurally logical. They are not evidence of Pakistani recklessness. They are evidence of Pakistani value - of a country that understands, with characteristic precision, what it has that others want, and what it can therefore demand in return.

THE INTEROPERABILITY ARCHITECTURE

Perhaps the most analytically significant element of the covert cooperation allegations is the technological infrastructure that appears to support them. The December 2025 Foreign Military Sale approval for Pakistan’s F-16 fleet - centred on Link-16 MIDS-JTRS terminals and Mode 5 IFF cryptographic systems - deserves scrutiny beyond what it has received in public commentary. Link-16 is not a counterterrorism tool. It is the communications backbone of NATO and partner-nation combined air operations. It allows aircraft from different nations to share real-time targeting data, situational awareness pictures, and airspace deconfliction information without voice communication.

Mode 5 IFF is the cryptographic standard that allows coalition aircraft to identify each other reliably at beyond-visual-range distances - precisely the capability required to safely conduct joint air operations in a congested, high-threat environment.

The combination of these capabilities in the PAF’s F-16 fleet transforms those aircraft from capable but isolated national assets into genuine coalition partners capable of full operational integration with US carrier air wings. The timing of the upgrade - formally notified to Congress in December 2025, months before the outbreak of hostilities - suggests that this transformation was a deliberate preparatory step rather than routine fleet maintenance.

THE MARITIME DIMENSION

The allegation that Pakistan has been sharing the positional data of Iranian naval vessels with US forces for targeting is the most legally complex and strategically consequential of the three claims. Under international law, providing targeting intelligence that destroys a foreign state’s military assets constitutes participation in hostilities - regardless of whether Pakistan’s own forces fired any weapons.

The practical mechanism is plausible. Pakistan’s P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft - US-supplied platforms specifically designed for wide-area ocean surveillance - are among the most capable maritime patrol assets in the region. Operating from Mehran Naval Air Station and potentially from deployed positions along the Arabian Sea coastline, they can track surface vessels across hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of ocean. The data they generate - vessel identification, course, speed, position - is precisely what US targeting systems require to engage Iranian surface units.

RISK CALCULUS

Pakistan’s strategic calculation in this covert cooperation framework appears to rest on three assumptions: first, that Iran cannot confirm the allegations with sufficient certainty to justify military retaliation; second, that China, while unhappy, will not fundamentally alter the CPEC relationship over Pakistan’s cooperation with a US operation that China itself has not strongly opposed; and third, that the United States will reward Pakistan’s quiet support with the diplomatic cover, arms transfers, and economic assistance that have historically been the payment for such services.
Each of these assumptions carries significant risk.

Iran’s intelligence services are sophisticated and have deep networks within Pakistan. China’s tolerance for Pakistani strategic autonomy that cuts against its own regional interests has limits that have not been fully tested. And American rewards for allied cooperation have historically been contingent on political circumstances that change - as Pakistan discovered painfully in the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan War.

Pakistan’s apparent covert cooperation with US operations against Iran, if confirmed, represents neither a strategic masterstroke nor a catastrophic miscalculation.

It represents the latest iteration of a strategic model that Pakistan has operated successfully for decades - the disciplined extraction of great power benefit through the provision of covert services that maintain plausible deniability. Whether that model remains sustainable in the dramatically elevated risk environment of the 2026 Iran war is a question that Rawalpindi’s planners have presumably calculated. Whether they have calculated it correctly is a question that history will answer.