ISLAMABAD — U.N. regional envoy Geir Pedersen arrived at Nur Khan Air Base on Sunday morning for an unannounced round of consultations with the Pakistani, Saudi and Egyptian mediators trying to coax Iran and Israel toward structured talks, even as overnight exchanges of fire underscored how far apart the two combatants remain in their fifth week of war.

Pedersen, who flew in from Geneva, met first with Pakistani Foreign Secretary Saira Tarar at the foreign ministry compound, then joined the Saudi and Egyptian delegations for a closed working lunch. Officials from all three governments said the focus was the short “framework principles” paper that the mediators began circulating on Friday — a document Pakistani officials describe as deliberately under-written, intended to lock in the outline of a meeting before anyone has to defend its contents.

“The Secretary-General asked me to listen first and to carry messages second,” Pedersen told reporters in a brief statement on the ministry’s marble steps. “There is a paper. It is not yet a deal. It is not even yet a draft. But it is a piece of paper, and that is more than the region has had in five weeks.”

His visit caps a weekend of low-visibility shuttle activity. Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed al-Khuraiji flew to Muscat on Saturday for what Omani officials described as “a private exchange of views,” before returning to Islamabad late Saturday night. Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Hossam Zaki used the same weekend to fly to Doha, where Qatar — sidelined from the formal Islamabad track at Iran’s request — is nevertheless being kept informed and is hosting parallel discussions on a prospective prisoner exchange.

Tehran and Tel Aviv keep their distance

Neither Iran nor Israel has sent representatives to Islamabad, and neither is expected to until the framework paper is formally adopted. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in a televised address from Tehran on Saturday evening, called the document “an honest attempt that nevertheless contains language we will need to revise,” singling out a clause on the verification of nuclear sites as “premature.” He did not reject the paper outright, which Western diplomats took as a measured signal.

A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, asked Sunday whether Israel had received the text, said only that Israel was “in continuous consultation with our American allies and will not negotiate under fire.” Israeli officials privately told European counterparts over the weekend that Jerusalem viewed the Islamabad track as “useful pressure on Tehran” but not as a forum it would join in the near term, according to two European diplomats briefed on those conversations.

The reticence on both sides matched the night’s military picture. Iranian state media reported overnight Israeli strikes on what it called “logistics infrastructure” near Kermanshah and a second wave of strikes south of Tehran. The Israel Defense Forces said it had intercepted seven drones and one ballistic missile fired toward central Israel between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. local time. U.S. Central Command, in a written statement, confirmed that two Marines were wounded in a rocket attack on a base in western Iraq on Saturday night, attributing the strike to an Iran-aligned militia. Congressional staff tallies put the U.S. military death toll across the war at roughly 345.

Beijing and Moscow circle

The weekend also brought new signals from outside the immediate mediation. China’s Foreign Ministry, in a Sunday statement read by spokesperson Hua Chunying in Beijing, said the Islamabad track had Beijing’s “full encouragement” and offered to host a follow-on session on nuclear verification “should the parties wish.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking to reporters in Moscow on Saturday, said Russia was “in contact with both Tehran and the mediators” and warned against “any attempt to write a security architecture for the region from which Russia is excluded.”

The dual signals were read in Western capitals as a contest for relevance rather than spoiler activity. “Beijing wants to be the venue for the verification chapter; Moscow wants to be the underwriter for whatever comes next,” said John Reilly, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has advised past U.S. negotiating teams. “Neither is trying to blow this up. Both are positioning for the moment it works.”

In Washington, a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the U.S. posture, said the administration had received a copy of the framework paper through the Saudi delegation late Friday and was “studying it carefully without comment.” The official said the United States remained focused on what it called “the architecture of escalation” — the Houthi front, Iraqi militia rocketry, and Hezbollah’s posture on Israel’s northern border — and would not endorse any text that addressed only the bilateral exchange of fire.

Pressure from regional capitals

Gulf and European officials say the pressure on the mediators is now less about persuading Tehran or Jerusalem than about preventing the paper from being weighed down with amendments before either capital has had to engage with it. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, in a Sunday phone call with Tarar that Ankara confirmed in a brief readout, urged the mediators to “preserve the simplicity of the text” and offered Istanbul as a possible venue for a future round.

“Every capital wants a paragraph in the paper, and every paragraph is a reason for someone in Tehran or Tel Aviv to say no,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst with the Levant Policy Forum. “The mediators’ job this weekend is to say no to their friends so that next week they can say yes to the parties.”

Pedersen, after his afternoon meetings, was scheduled to fly Sunday night to Riyadh for consultations with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan before returning to Geneva on Tuesday. U.N. officials said he would brief Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday and would not characterize the weekend’s exchanges publicly until then.

Pakistani officials said a joint communiqué from the Islamabad mediators, originally expected Monday, might be delayed by 24 to 48 hours to give Tehran additional time to respond to the framework text. Further consultations, they said, would be announced once the parties were prepared to be named.