ISLAMABAD — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt jointly released a four-page set of framework principles in Islamabad on Monday, formally putting on the table the first written proposal of the war and asking Iran and Israel to respond within ten days as the fighting entered its sixth week.

The document, titled “Principles for a Conditional Cessation of Hostilities and a Verification Architecture,” was unveiled at a midday news conference at Aiwan-e-Sadr, the presidential complex, by Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar alongside Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed al-Khuraiji and Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Hossam Zaki. The three mediators, who have shuttled for the past ten days between Riyadh, Tehran, Jerusalem and Washington, said the principles were intended to function as a “common reading” of what a near-term halt to the fighting would require, not as a binding draft.

“This is the doorway, not the room,” Dar said, holding up a stapled copy of the English-language text. “What we have written down is what we believe each party has, in private, said it could accept. The work of the next ten days is to discover whether those private statements survive in public.”

The text, copies of which were shared with foreign correspondents and posted in full on the Pakistani Foreign Ministry’s website, sets out five principles. They include a 72-hour conditional pause on strikes against civilian and energy infrastructure as a confidence-building step; the immediate redeployment of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to declared Iranian nuclear sites under a joint Gulf observer arrangement; a parallel exchange of detained foreign nationals on humanitarian grounds; the establishment of a maritime deconfliction line in the Strait of Hormuz monitored by U.N. observers; and a commitment by all parties to refrain from operations against shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb.

Notably absent from the public text is any reference to Iranian support for what Tehran calls regional “resistance forces,” a subject Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said is non-negotiable. Two diplomats with knowledge of the back-channel exchanges said the question had been moved into a confidential annex accessible only to the mediators and the parties, a structural concession to Tehran that allowed the rest of the framework to be published.

Tehran signals openness, with reservations

Araghchi, speaking from Tehran on state television Monday evening, said Iran would study the framework “with the seriousness it deserves” and confirmed that Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian had convened an emergency session of the council earlier in the day to begin a formal review. He said Tehran appreciated the mediators’ “even-handed posture” but warned that any verification clause that exceeded existing safeguards agreements would be “rejected without further consideration.”

“We have not seen anything yet that asks Iran to surrender. We have also not seen anything that asks Israel to stop. We will read what is in front of us and we will respond,” Araghchi said. Iranian state media outlets, which earlier in the war had described mediation efforts as Western maneuvering, gave the Islamabad document prominent and largely neutral coverage on Monday evening bulletins.

The Israeli response was more guarded. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, Eylon Levy, told reporters in Tel Aviv that Israel had received the framework “through appropriate channels” and would consult with the United States before responding. Levy declined to characterize the document but said any arrangement that did not address what he called “the missile transfer pipeline to Hezbollah” would be inadequate. Israeli officials privately told European counterparts the framework’s silence on that pipeline, even in the confidential annex, was a significant problem, according to two European diplomats briefed on the exchanges.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, said Washington viewed the principles as “a serious piece of work” but emphasized that the United States was “not a party to the framework, by design.” The official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with Dar and with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan over the weekend and had passed comments on specific clauses but had declined to endorse the text as a whole. President Donald Trump, asked about the framework as he boarded Marine One on Monday afternoon, called it “interesting, we’ll see,” and said he would speak with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later in the week.

A widening cast of supporting voices

The mediators released the framework with a cushion of public endorsements from a third tier of governments that have not been directly involved in the drafting. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, in a statement from Ankara, called the principles “the most credible diplomatic product of the war so far” and said Turkey was prepared to contribute to the maritime monitoring arrangement. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, at a regular briefing in Beijing, said China “welcomed and supported” the framework and would “consider how Beijing might constructively assist,” language that diplomats in the Chinese capital read as a step beyond the more passive formulations Beijing has used since the war began.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in remarks to the Interfax news agency, said Moscow had been briefed by the Pakistani ambassador and supported the verification provisions, while warning that any U.N. observer deployment to the Strait of Hormuz would require Security Council authorization rather than a side arrangement. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a written statement from New York, called the framework “the first real opening this war has produced” and said the United Nations stood ready to provide the observer architecture envisaged in the text.

“The pattern matters as much as the paper,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst with the Levant Policy Forum. “Tehran did not denounce it. Jerusalem did not denounce it. Washington did not pre-empt it. That is not yet a ceasefire, but it is the first day of this war where the diplomatic floor has not collapsed under everyone’s feet.”

What happens next

The mediators set a target of April 16 for written responses from both Iran and Israel, with the understanding that those responses can take the form of proposed amendments rather than yes-or-no positions. A senior Pakistani official, briefing reporters after the announcement, said the three governments would convene again in Riyadh on April 12 to review whatever the parties had returned, with U.N. envoy Geir Pedersen present as an observer.

Iranian state television reported late Monday that the Supreme National Security Council session in Tehran had ended after roughly four hours without a public decision, and that another session was scheduled for Wednesday. In Tel Aviv, Israel’s security cabinet was expected to take up the framework on Tuesday morning. Mediators said additional consultations with U.S., European and Gulf officials would be announced if the responses warranted a further round before the Riyadh meeting.