Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi landed in Islamabad to the deep throaty roar of Pakistani fighter jets escorting his large civilian airliner to an air base just outside the capital.
It was a few minutes past midnight when he was greeted by Pakistan’s top mediators, the powerful Field Marshal Asim Munir, as well as Pakistan’s foreign and interior ministers.
What happened next was unusual by the expected norms of diplomacy.
They plunged into an all-night talks that ended as the sun was coming up almost five hours later.
US President Donald Trump said he is in “no rush” for a deal, but the optics of this meeting suggest otherwise.
For several days this past week the public facing part of the peace efforts had been at a slow shuffle. What happened in the early hours of this morning hint at a renewed urgency.
It’s unclear yet why the delegations didn’t meet at a more civilised hour, but the impression has been created they needed or wanted to conclude their opening face-to-face discussion before Trump and other US officials went down for the night.
Pakistan is nine hours ahead of the time in Washington, DC, so as the sun came up here this morning it was only 8 p.m. ET in Mar-a-Lago.
How the conversations here will impact decisions being made overnight by Trump is unclear.
At the same time, the speed of Trump’s top envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s travel to Pakistan now appears to have been set back a beat.
They are not expected in Pakistan until Sunday now. The timing of their eventual arrival, if it happens at all, will tell us more on whether a breakthrough is on the cards.