Pakistan rejects US media report on Iranian planes at its base

A US media report claims Pakistan allowed Iranian military aircraft to park at its airbase to shield them from American strikes during the US‑Iran war.

Washington: Pakistan, which is playing a mediator role to end the US-Iran war, allowed Iranian military aircraft to park on its airfield to shield them from American airstrikes, according to a US media report.

The CBS News report prompted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to call for dumping Pakistan as mediator in the US-Iran conflict.

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At the Senate Appropriations sub-committee hearing on the Iran conflict on Tuesday, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to respond to the questions on the media report.

“I wouldn’t want to get in the middle of these negotiations,” Hegseth said in response to questions from Graham at the Senate subcommittee hearing.

Graham insisted that Pakistan’s actions were inconsistent with being a fair mediator.

“I don’t trust Pakistan as far as I can throw them. If they actually do have Iranian aircraft parked in Pakistan bases to protect Iranian military assets, that tells me we should be looking maybe for somebody else to mediate. No wonder this damn thing is going nowhere,” Graham, the Senator from South Carolina, said.

Given some of the prior statements by Pakistani defence officials towards Israel, I would not be shocked if this were true, he said.

The report, quoting unnamed US officials, said that Iran sent multiple aircraft, including a reconnaissance and intelligence plane, to Pakistan’s Nur Khan airbase soon after US President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire in April.

A senior Pakistan official rejected the claims involving Nur Khan Air Base, and told the media outlet that the airfield is right in the heart of (the) city, a large fleet of aircraft parked there can’t be hidden from (the) public eye.

In a statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Office rejected the report as “misleading” and said that the Iranian aircraft currently parked in the country arrived during the ceasefire period following the initial round of US-Iran peace talks and bears “no linkage” to any military contingency or preservation arrangement.

The report also claimed that Iran had parked its civilian aircraft in neighbouring Afghanistan to protect it from US airstrikes.

An Afghan civil aviation officer told CBS News that an Iranian civilian aircraft belonging to Mahan Air landed in Kabul shortly before the war started and remained parked after the closure of the Iranian airspace.

The same aircraft was moved to an airport in Herat near the Iranian border after Pakistan launched attacks on Afghanistan, the Afghan officials said, adding that the Mahan Air plane was the only Iranian aircraft in the country.

Pakistan’s reliance on China for military assistance has risen dramatically over the past decade. A Stockholm International Peace Research Institute study showed China supplied about 80 per cent of Pakistan’s major arms between 2020 and 2024, and Islamabad also has close economic ties with Beijing, the report said.

Islamabad has attempted to navigate both sides of the crisis, presenting itself to Washington as a stabilising intermediary while avoiding steps that could alienate Tehran or China, Iran’s most powerful international backer, the report added.