Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar spoke by telephone late on Monday with Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the two agreed that implementing the Islamabad memorandum of understanding remained the best course of action to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States, according to a statement from Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported by the Express Tribune on 16 September 2026. The ministry said Grossi offered technical support should the need arise, without specifying what such support would involve or who would authorise it.

The Islamabad MoU was signed electronically in June 2026 after Pakistan mediated between Washington and Tehran, aiming to halt military operations and open a pathway toward a broader settlement covering Iran’s nuclear programme, sanctions and regional security, according to reporting summarised by Pakeez on 16 September 2026. Dar also used the call to reaffirm Pakistan’s commitment to the UN Charter and to wish Grossi well in his campaign to become the next UN secretary-general, a detail both outlets noted but did not examine for its bearing on the appearance of neutrality in Grossi’s advice.

An accuser positioned as a mediator

Grossi’s endorsement of the Islamabad framework comes only days after the IAEA’s own governing body referred Iran’s nuclear file to the UN Security Council over non-compliance findings, a step that Al Jazeera reported on 10 September 2026 as a significant escalation with legal and diplomatic consequences for Tehran. That referral placed the IAEA squarely on one side of the dispute, as the body making the accusation that could trigger renewed sanctions or Security Council action against Iran.

Days later, the same agency’s chief was being described by Pakistani officials as offering technical support to help implement a peace framework between the accused party and the United States. Neither the Pakistani Foreign Ministry statement nor the coverage built on it addressed how Grossi’s dual role, as the official who referred Iran to the Security Council and as a figure now endorsing the diplomatic path meant to calm the fallout from that referral, should be reconciled. Pakeez’s own analysis noted that neither the Foreign Ministry nor the IAEA statement indicated Grossi was assuming a political negotiating role, describing his offer as strictly technical, though it did not explain what technical assistance means in a dispute that is fundamentally about verification, compliance and political trust rather than engineering.

Grossi is also a declared candidate to succeed Antonio Guterres as UN secretary-general when Guterres’s term ends this year, a fact Dar highlighted directly in his public remarks. That candidacy raises a further question about incentive: an IAEA chief seeking a promotion to the UN’s top job has reason to be seen brokering peace, even where his own agency’s technical findings are what set the crisis in motion.

How the outlets framed it

The Express Tribune and Pakeez both presented the Dar-Grossi call as a straightforward diplomatic bridge, framing the Islamabad MoU as the obvious best path forward and treating Grossi’s offer of technical support as routine goodwill rather than something requiring scrutiny. Neither outlet’s account paused to ask why the IAEA, having referred Iran to the Security Council only days earlier according to Al Jazeera’s 10 September 2026 reporting, is now positioned as the trusted technical partner in de-escalation. That gap between the accusatory function of the IAEA’s referral and the conciliatory framing of Grossi’s phone call reveals an institutional contradiction that official statements, by design, do not surface.

What the record does not show

Public accounts do not indicate who drafted the Islamabad memorandum’s text, what enforcement mechanism exists if either Washington or Tehran breaches it, or what legal authority permits the IAEA director-general to offer bilateral technical assistance outside the Board of Governors process that produced the Security Council referral. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry statement, as relayed by the Associated Press of Pakistan and cited by regional outlets, describes agreement in principle but no new signed text, no timeline and no independent verification mechanism beyond what already existed in June.