Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan is scrambling to keep channels of diplomacy open between the United States and Iran, amid escalating rhetoric from both sides, and growing signals from Washington that it is prepared to restart attacks that have been on pause since an April 8 ceasefire in the US-Israel war on Iran.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi arrived in Tehran on Saturday for a two-day visit, meeting President Masoud Pezeshkian, Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf as Islamabad scrambled to prevent ceasefire negotiations from collapsing altogether. Ghalibaf has also been Iran’s chief negotiator in peace talks with the US to end the war, which began on February 28.

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Yet on Sunday, as Naqvi continued talks with Iranian officials, US President Donald Trump issued a warning on Truth Social: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

Over the weekend, Trump also met his top national security team, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Tehran’s version of events, however, has sharply differed from Washington’s public posture.

At his weekly press conference on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said that despite Trump publicly calling Iran’s response “totally unacceptable” last week, Washington had sent “a set of revised points and considerations” through Pakistani mediators.

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Iran had reviewed them and responded through the same channel. “The process is continuing through Pakistan,” Baghaei said. Later, Iran’s state-run Tasnim news agency said that Iran’s submission to Pakistan — to be transmitted to the US — included a 14-point proposal.

Yet tensions have continued to mount. Over the weekend, drones struck an electrical generator outside the perimeter of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia separately said it intercepted three drones launched from Iraqi airspace.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Monday condemned the Barakah strike as “a grave violation of international law” and urged all parties to “exercise maximum restraint”.

The developments underscored how far diplomacy has deteriorated since the ceasefire came into effect 40 days ago.

Both sides have exchanged proposals, rejected each other’s core demands, and increasingly shifted to the language of military escalation, with renewed hostilities now a real possibility, according to analysts.

The proposal breakdown

Following the April 8 ceasefire and the collapse of talks in Islamabad on April 11-12, Washington and Tehran continued exchanging proposals through Pakistani intermediaries.

On April 28, Iran submitted a 14-point counterproposal calling for a permanent end to hostilities within 30 days, a US withdrawal from areas near its borders, the lifting of a US naval blockade, the release of frozen assets, war reparations, and a new mechanism governing the Strait of Hormuz. Nuclear issues were explicitly excluded.

Washington responded early May with its own plan. Its central demands included a 20-year moratorium on uranium enrichment, the transfer abroad of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, estimated at roughly 400kg (882 pounds) enriched to 60 percent, and the dismantling of nuclear facilities at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow.

Confirming receipt of the US proposal at the time, Baghaei stressed that Iran’s own plan focused solely on ending the conflict.

“The plan we have presented is centred on ending the war. There are absolutely no details regarding the country’s nuclear issues in this proposal,” he said.

Tehran took 10 days to respond. Iran’s written response offered to transfer some enriched uranium to a third country while postponing nuclear negotiations until after a permanent ceasefire. But Trump dismissed it as “totally unacceptable”.

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Baghaei reiterated Tehran’s position on Monday.

“This is absolutely not a topic we negotiate or compromise on. Iran’s right to enrichment has been recognised under the NPT,” he said, referring to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Israel, the other aggressor in the war along with the US, has not signed.

Iran also laid out five preconditions for any renewed talks: an end to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon; sanctions relief; the release of frozen assets; war compensation; and recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Javad Heiran-Nia, an international relations analyst based in Tehran, told Al Jazeera the dispute over sequencing was fundamental rather than tactical.

Iran wanted the Hormuz issue resolved first to prevent Washington from using the naval blockade as leverage during future nuclear negotiations, he said.

“The US wants nuclear talks from the very beginning so that it can maintain the naval blockade during negotiations and keep it as an effective card,” he said.

“This is a deep structural gap: Iran is seeking a long-term insurance policy following the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, while Washington wants to use military and sanctions pressure to obtain maximum concessions,” the analyst added, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal that global powers had reached with Iran, before Trump walked out of it.

Ilhan Niaz, professor of history at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said both sides had strategic reasons to remain entrenched.

“Iran is now stronger because of the war than it could have ever hoped to become under a continuation of the previous set of containment policies [of the US],” he told Al Jazeera. “Iran will hold out for terms congruent with reality, and the US will hold out for terms compatible with the preservation of its superpower prestige.”

Pakistan’s role under strain

Naqvi was the third senior Pakistani official to visit Tehran in recent weeks, following army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir’s late April trip and an earlier joint visit by Munir and Naqvi.

Heiran-Nia warned that Pakistan was approaching a critical threshold.

“Pakistan is on the verge of shifting from being an indispensable channel to an option ignored by both sides,” he told Al Jazeera. “Once Iran and the US engage through other channels such as Oman or Qatar, or conclude that Pakistan is unable to impose its will on either side, Islamabad’s role will become marginal.”

Mehran Kamrava, professor of international relations at Georgetown University in Qatar, however, pushed back on that assessment.

“The collapse of the ceasefire would not necessarily mean Pakistan would be ignored by either side,” he told Al Jazeera. “Pakistan is critically important diplomatically as a source of contact and communication.”

The divide between Washington and Tehran was wide and the animosities deep, he said, but that did not diminish Islamabad’s position. “It remains a key channel regardless of how the military situation evolves,” the Doha-based analyst said.

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Baghaei also confirmed on Monday that consultations with Oman were continuing, including expert-level talks in Muscat focused on guaranteeing safe navigation through Hormuz.

Niaz argued that Pakistan had nonetheless achieved something tangible.

“Pakistani diplomacy has produced a stay of execution and the beginning of a diplomatic process,” he said.

The military picture

US military assessments published by The New York Times said Iran had restored operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, with its missile stockpile estimated at roughly 70 percent of pre-war levels.

Meanwhile, CNN reported that the US Pentagon had prepared target lists that included Iranian energy and infrastructure facilities.

Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi, spokesman for Iran’s Armed Forces, warned on May 17 that any repeat of US military action to “compensate for America’s humiliation” would trigger “more crushing and intense strikes”.

Heiran-Nia said the current crisis was more dangerous than previous cycles of brinkmanship. A direct naval clash, he warned, could trigger a rapid escalation “within the next 48 to 72 hours”. The weekend drone attacks, he noted, signalled how far Tehran might be willing to escalate.

“It demonstrates how far red lines might be crossed in a new war,” he said.

Kamrava said the risk of accidental escalation was as real as a deliberate one.

“There is a tremendous amount of hardware in the region and an awful lot of mistrust among all parties,” he told Al Jazeera.

He cautioned against viewing the situation as a purely bilateral US-Iran confrontation. “There are multiple flashpoints that could erupt at any moment,” he warned.

After Beijing

Trump had travelled to Beijing last week after weeks of messaging from his administration that Washington was hoping Chinese President Xi Jinping would pressure Tehran on opening up the Strait of Hormuz.

But their talks failed to yield a breakthrough on Iran. Both sides agreed that the strait must be open for commerce and trade. But China blamed the US for the war.

China had also instructed domestic companies the previous week to defy US sanctions targeting refiners purchasing Iranian crude.

At a meeting of the BRICS coalition of economies in New Delhi on May 15, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged receiving messages from Washington regarding new talks, but said “distrust” remained. Nuclear issues, he added, would be “postponed” to later stages, a sequencing approach that Washington rejects.

At Monday’s press conference, Baghaei said “America is no longer internationally credible” and urged regional countries, including the UAE, to draw lessons from recent months.

Niaz said the standoff resembled another conflict that took years to shift course.

“The situation is comparable to the US war in Vietnam after the Tet Offensive that shattered Washington’s claim the conflict was being won. That offensive proved that the US could not win and began the process of adjusting US policy to reality. But this adjustment took many years,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the surprise North Vietnamese assault on more than 100 South Vietnamese cities in January 1968.

Niaz described what lies ahead as “a prolonged stalemate punctuated by limited breakdowns of the ceasefire”.