The senior US official proposed that India should step in and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should give US President Donald Trump a call.
A former US official is not pleased with the prospect of Pakistan becoming a negotiator in mediating peace between Iran and the US amid the ongoing war. Questioning Pakistan's credibility former US Army combatant, Colonel Douglas Macgregor (retd) said that Israel wouldn't view the country as neutral in the negotiations and would “laugh off” the prospect of Islamabad as the venue for talks.
Instead, the official proposed that India should step in and Prime Minister Narendra Modi should give US President Donald Trump a call.
"If the Israelis heard that they were supposed to show up in Islamabad for a meeting, I think they'd laugh it off. This is ridiculous. Why should we trust anything those people say? That's not true for India. India is in a very good position that way," he was quoted as saying in a report by news agency ANI.
‘More comfortable with India’
Macgregor, who served as the advisor to the US Secretary of Defence in the first Donald Trump Administration, finds India much more well-positioned to offer assistance because PM Modi commands global respect and maintains working relationships with multiple international leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and leaders in Tehran. He also cited PM Modi's recent official visit to Israel and said: “The Israelis are comfortable with him. We are more comfortable with India.”Pakistan, on the other hand, has its own economic concerns to tend to, the US official said.
"For the Pakistanis to offer help is sort of like a man who is in a burning building offering you a spare room in the building. Pakistan's not going to be viewed in any way, shape or form as neutral by the Israelis," Macgregor said."They're going to view Pakistan as part of the problem. Why would you go to Pakistan to Islamabad to try and close a deal, if you will, on ending the war? That's an impossibility. It strikes me as just ludicrous nonsense," he added.
‘Pakistan not civilisational, India is’
The geopolitical risk advisor also said that Pakistan cannot be considered a civilisational state, but that is not the case for India. "Pakistan is not what I would call a civilisational state. It's part of a civilisational complex. But India itself is one of these core civilisational states, which is desperately needed, you know, in the world today," Macgregor said.
He said that PM Modi should speak to his advisors and call President Trump amid the ongoing West Asia conflict. "I think we would be better off if India exerted a great deal more influence in a place like the Indian Ocean and its surroundings," Col Macgregor said.
He said that he cannot foresee direct negotiations between Iran and US-Israel and said that if there's anyone Trump would listen to at this point, it would be PM Modi. “Prime Minister Modi can help with this. You have been through a lot of things in your own history. Many countries in the world have been victims of imperialism and colonialism...,” Macgregor said, adding that he is hopeful India would intervene even though it won't necessarily guarantee a miracle.
Pakistan has offered to be the lead negotiator in facilitating a potential deal that could bring the war between Iran and the US to and end. Several reports earlier said that American and Iranian officials could be meeting in Islamabad for the talks.
Both Iran and the US have their own set of demands to bring the conflict to an end. Iran had earlier responded negatively to a 15-point American proposal of ceasefire, saying the war would end only on Tehran's "own terms and timeline," a senior political-security official told state broadcaster Press TV.
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