PAKISTAN PERSPECTIVE

Islamabad covers the topic with unusual depth -- six dense paragraphs in Dawn, each fact numbered like a legal brief. Trump orders the Navy to destroy any boat laying mines in Hormuz. A second Iranian tanker is seized in the Indian Ocean. The USS George H.W. Bush arrives in the Middle East, bringing the number of US aircraft carriers in the region to three. Tehran air defense is activated overnight.

But Dawn is the only outlet in the pool to frame the whole story with a headline that says it all: 'Trump rules out N-option amid Hormuz struggle.' Nuclear weapons are officially off the table, but the very need to say it reveals the state of tensions. Trump claims 'total control over the Strait of Hormuz' -- a declaration Dawn juxtaposes with the reality of Iranian speedboats still laying mines.

For Pakistan, whose own mediation between the US and Iran is underway (Geo News reports the 'talks date is still awaited as Pakistan pushes for dialogue'), American stock depletion has a direct consequence: if Washington weakens militarily, Islamabad's diplomatic weight in the mediation increases. Dawn doesn't say it explicitly, but the coverage reads like a country sensing a window of opportunity opening.