Days after President Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran in early April, Tehran quietly moved multiple aircraft onto a Pakistani air force base, even as Islamabad was positioning itself as an honest broker between Washington and the Islamic Republic, CBS News reported, citing U.S. officials.
The aircraft landed at Nur Khan Air Force Base outside the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi. U.S. officials told CBS News that at least one Iranian Air Force RC-130 was among the military hardware sent to the facility. The movements, those officials said, reflected an apparent effort by Tehran to insulate some of its remaining military and aviation assets.
Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed Tuesday that Iranian planes were on its soil, but insisted they had nothing to do with any military contingency. The ministry called the aircraft a logistical arrangement to move diplomatic personnel and security teams if peace talks resumed. The denial landed flat against the backdrop of a conflict that has already drawn American warships into combat and sent Iranian drones into the airspace of a U.S. ally.
Islamabad's story doesn't add up
Pakistan's official statement tried to wave away the implications. The ministry said the Iranian aircraft "arrived during the ceasefire period and bear no linkage whatsoever to any military contingency or preservation arrangement." It called suggestions to the contrary "speculative, misleading, and entirely detached from the factual context."
A senior Pakistani official pushed back harder, telling CBS News that the base's location made secrecy impossible:
"Nur Khan base is right in the heart of [the] city, a large fleet of aircrafts parked there can't be hidden from [the] public eye."
That argument cuts both ways. If the aircraft are visible to anyone in Rawalpindi, then Pakistan made no effort to hide them, which raises the question of whether Islamabad thought the arrangement was defensible, or simply didn't care how it looked to Washington.
The ministry also said Pakistan "has consistently acted as an impartial facilitator" and has been transparent with "all relevant parties." It added that "although formal negotiations have not yet resumed, senior-level diplomatic exchanges have continued." Whether those exchanges included a heads-up to the United States about Iranian military aircraft sitting on a Pakistani runway remains unanswered.
Iran's broader pattern of moving assets and personnel through allied or compliant nations is well documented. Just last year, a Los Angeles woman was arrested at LAX for allegedly trafficking Iranian weapons to Sudan, a reminder that Tehran's logistics networks reach far beyond its own borders.
Afghanistan enters the picture
The Iranian aircraft story extends beyond Pakistan. An Afghan civil aviation officer told CBS News that an Iranian civilian aircraft belonging to Mahan Air landed in Kabul shortly before the war started. After Iranian airspace closed, the plane stayed parked at Kabul airport. Taliban civil aviation authorities later moved it to Herat Airport, near the Iranian border, citing safety reasons.
Two U.S. officials told CBS News it was not clear whether military aircraft were among the Iranian flights sent to Afghanistan.
The Taliban's chief spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, flatly denied any Iranian planes were in the country. "No, that's not true and Iran doesn't need to do that," Mujahid said. That denial sits uneasily next to the Afghan aviation officer's account, and next to the Taliban's own recent history of public statements that don't hold up under scrutiny.
Mujahid is no stranger to making claims that collapse on contact with evidence. During Pakistan's recent airstrikes inside Afghanistan, the same spokesman accused Pakistani aircraft of striking fuel depots belonging to private airline Kam Air near the airport in Kandahar. The New York Post reported that Mujahid said the Kam Air fuel depot supplied civilian airlines as well as United Nations aircraft, a claim meant to frame Pakistan as reckless. But Pakistan's state-run television said its armed forces carried out "successful airstrikes inside Afghanistan" targeting alleged militant hideouts and support infrastructure.
The cross-border conflict between Pakistan and the Taliban-led government in Kabul has been escalating since at least March, when Pakistan began airstrikes on Afghan territory over allegations involving Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. That campaign expanded sharply. Pakistan acknowledged bombing Kabul and Kandahar and said 37 locations across Afghanistan had been hit, as Breitbart reported, with Afghan forces firing anti-aircraft weapons at Pakistani planes over the capital.
That volatile environment makes the presence of Iranian aircraft on Afghan soil, military or otherwise, a serious complication. Any Iranian asset parked at an Afghan airfield sits inside an active conflict zone where Pakistan is already conducting strikes.
The wider war grinds on
The aircraft revelations arrive as the broader U.S.-Iran confrontation shows no sign of cooling. Small-scale clashes continued around the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. The United Arab Emirates said Iranian drones again targeted its territory following several strikes earlier in the week, CBS News reported, citing Reuters.
Last week, CBS News reported that three American Navy destroyers transiting the Strait of Hormuz came under attack, and the U.S. carried out strikes on two Iranian ports abutting the strait. The conflict has already produced the kind of direct naval engagement that U.S. Marines demonstrated when they boarded and seized an Iranian cargo ship in an earlier clash of the naval blockade.
Iran's state-run broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, disclosed Tehran's latest proposal to end the war in a social media post. President Trump rejected the counteroffer publicly and bluntly: "TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE."
With negotiations stalled and combat continuing, Iran's decision to scatter aircraft across neighboring countries looks less like routine diplomacy and more like contingency planning for a longer fight. And Pakistan's willingness to host those assets, while claiming neutrality, looks like a country hedging its bets at Washington's expense.
Pakistan's balancing act and its limits
Pakistan has long tried to maintain relationships with both the United States and Iran while also managing its own security crisis along the Afghan border. But hosting Iranian military hardware during an active U.S.-Iran conflict tests the limits of that balancing act in ways Islamabad may not be able to talk its way out of.
The country's defense posture is already tilted away from Washington. A Stockholm International Peace Research Institute study found that China supplied about 80 percent of Pakistan's major arms between 2020 and 2024. That dependency on Beijing adds another layer to the picture as President Trump prepares to travel to Beijing this week for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Iran's willingness to move assets into Pakistan and Afghanistan also fits a broader pattern of the regime testing boundaries wherever it can find a willing or compliant partner. The threat is not limited to airfields in South Asia. A federal jury recently convicted an Iranian operative who plotted to assassinate President Trump, a reminder that Tehran's operations extend well beyond conventional military maneuvers.
U.S. Central Command, for its part, referred CBS News to Afghan and Pakistani officials for comment, a notable deflection that leaves the public record thin on what, exactly, Washington intends to do about the arrangement.
Several questions remain unanswered. How many Iranian aircraft are at Nur Khan? Were U.S. officials informed before the planes arrived? Did Pakistan seek or receive any assurances from Washington before opening its runways to Tehran? And what leverage, if any, does the United States plan to exercise over a country that receives most of its weapons from China and is now sheltering Iranian military hardware?
Some members of Congress have already signaled that the U.S.-Iran confrontation may not end at the negotiating table. Rep. Pat Fallon has predicted that U.S. troops will ultimately deploy to Iran, saying he sees "no other way." Whether or not that assessment proves correct, the discovery of Iranian aircraft on Pakistani soil makes the diplomatic path narrower and the stakes higher.
A country that parks another nation's warplanes on its runways while calling itself a neutral mediator isn't mediating. It's choosing a side and hoping nobody notices.
