Pakistan's top civil and military leaders are conducting intensive shuttle diplomacy — visiting Riyadh, Doha, Ankara and Tehran — to prevent a fragile US-Iran ceasefire from collapsing and bring both sides back to the negotiating table in Islamabad, where the two countries held their first direct talks last week. The war, which began on 28 February when the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, has prompted Tehran to block the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a global energy shock that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has called the gravest threat to energy security in history; IEA director Fatih Birol warned that more than 80 energy facilities in the Gulf region have been damaged, that full pre-war production capacity could take two years to restore, and that markets are underestimating the impact of the continued closure. On the political front, US House Democrats introduced six articles of impeachment against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of waging an unauthorised war, committing war crimes — including a strike on an Iranian primary school that killed at least 170 people — and mishandling classified information, though the effort faces long odds given the Republican majority in Congress. The economic fallout is falling unevenly across Asia: Bangladesh has been forced to spend roughly $880 million buying emergency liquefied natural gas on the volatile spot market at double pre-war prices, while Pakistan — which invested heavily in solar power after the 2022 Ukraine-linked energy crisis — has avoided spot purchases altogether, illustrating how renewable energy investment can buffer countries against fossil-fuel price shocks.