Did Imran Khan’s refusal to host US bases, Russia outreach, and tensions with Pakistan’s military reshape the country’s trajectory, leading to his removal as the prime minister and incarceration on trumped-up charges?
When the then chief of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), William J Burns, arrived in Islamabad in June 2021, he was kept waiting for a day before being told he would be unable to meet Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan’s office cited protocol and said he would only take calls from his counterpart, President Joe Biden, who had declined repeated requests for a call since taking office in January 2021.
The refusal to engage with Khan followed the Pakistani leader’s warm relations and three meetings with Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, during his first term in office. In July 2019, Khan met Trump at the White House for over 90 minutes. They met again twice—on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meetings in September that year and in the White House four months later in January 2020. Imran Khan’s meetings with Trump coincided with Pakistan’s help in brokering the American-Taliban agreement for the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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Burns flew to Islamabad months after Biden took office to discuss the use of Pakistani territory for drone bases focused on Afghanistan post-withdrawal. Apart from Imran Khan’s refusal to meet him, Burns also failed to get the bases. Khan doubled down days after refusing to meet Burns. In an interview with American journalist Jonathan Swan, he famously said “absolutely not” when asked whether he would allow bases or action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan weeks before Kabul fell to the Taliban. Khan would not remain in power too long to make good on his promise.
Breakdown of Imran Khan’s Relationship With Washington
Imran Khan maintained that the US was behind his removal from power for his refusal to bow to its demands. He cited a ‘cypher’, or a classified diplomatic cable detailing a March 2022 meeting of Asad Majeed Khan, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, with State Department official Donald Lu, on a regime change conspiracy. In May 2026, American nonprofit investigative news outlet Drop Site News vindicated his stand, detailing a chain reaction that the dismissal of Burns’s request and the fall of Kabul set off.
The outlet cited a review of leaked documents, saying it showed that Khan’s government was also rebuffing Saudi Arabia as it pressed Pakistan for a defense pact during the same period. Drop Site News concluded that Khan’s government was, in principle, drawing diplomatic red lines with both Washington and the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council. The Pakistani military concluded that Khan’s red lines were isolating Pakistan. It quietly retained a former CIA Islamabad station chief as a lobbyist in Washington in July 2021 without Khan’s knowledge. Drop Site News described this as an early sign that Pakistan’s generals were beginning to move independently of their own government.
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Making matters worse, Imran Khan found himself in the center of the maelstrom when he was in Moscow for a scheduled meeting with President Vladimir Putin in February 2022, while Russia invaded Ukraine, making it the Biden administration’s overriding foreign policy priority. The US pressed countries to pick a side days after US national security advisor Jake Sullivan called his Pakistani counterpart, Moeed Yusuf, and asked him to persuade Khan to cancel his Moscow trip. The details of that call were leaked to Drop Site and showed Sullivan warning against the visit and pressing Islamabad to side with the US in the Ukraine war.
How the Ukraine War Changed US-Pakistan Dynamics
Putin and Khan’s photos shaking hands went viral on social media the day the news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine hit the headlines. Khan’s refusal to cancel his Moscow trip did not go down well with Washington. Pakistan angered the US further by joining China and much of the Global South in abstaining from a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the Russian invasion. This prompted US diplomats to tell their Pakistani interlocutors privately that the relationship could not continue on its existing terms.
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Asad Majeed Khan’s meeting with Donald Lu on March 7, 2022, became the inflection point of the US-Pakistan relationship. According to the leaked classified diplomatic cable, Lu told the envoy that Washington’s grievances with Imran Khan’s government could be set aside, ‘all will be forgiven,’ if Khan were removed from office through a no-confidence vote.
The sequence of events appeared to have followed the dictate. A month later, Imran Khan was removed from office on April 9, 2022, following a no-confidence vote, and was jailed months later. Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, remain jailed on a series of corruption, contempt, and national security charges.
Pakistan Military’s Strategic Shift After Khan’s Removal
The new government installed in Islamabad with the military’s backing reversed Imran Khan’s policies and immediately supplied artillery shells and other munitions to Ukraine. Drop Site News cited leaked documents, saying they showed the weapons were routed through US defense contractors and third-country intermediaries, easing shortages in Ukrainian stockpiles during the first year of the war.
American support for Pakistan’s International Monetary Fund programme was linked to the continuation of the weapons supply. The US turned a blind eye when Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was outlawed, stripped of its electoral symbol ahead of the 2024 general election, and barred from fielding candidates on its own as the military helped reinstall a pliable government in Islamabad.
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General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistan’s then army chief, visited Washington in October 2022 after Khan’s removal to reset ties and met with top officials, including defense secretary Lloyd Austin and Sullivan. Drop Site News reported that Bajwa assured the US that Pakistan would limit the ranges of its missiles to just fall short of Israel, months after Pakistan conducted a test of the Shaheen III, its longest-range ballistic missile with a range of almost 3,000 kilometers, on the day of Khan’s removal.
General Bajwa, Asim Munir, and Pakistan’s Nuclear Oversight
Drop Site News noted the test was essentially a validation that Islamabad’s missiles also had the capacity to reach Israel, even as Pakistan’s missile programme has been focused on India. It added that Bajwa sought to curry more favour and assured his American interlocutors that Pakistan wanted to rein in its military, limit its nuclear programme, and move away from China.
Drop Site News cited an unnamed source and said Bajwa ordered the head of Pakistan’s Strategic Plan Division (SPD), the military division overseeing nuclear weapons, to allow an American delegation to visit and inspect some sensitive nuclear sites soon after returning from the US in October 2022. It said the SPD head, who reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (JCSC), which in turn reported to the prime minister, not to the army chief, refused Bajwa’s order. Drop Site New linked the creation of a new office of Chief of Defence Forces for Bajwa’s successor, General Asim Munir, and the abolishing of JCSC’s role through a constitutional amendment to this. It cited unprecedented bureaucratic maneuvers and said it placed ‘staunchly pro-US army chief’ Munir in charge of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
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Imran Khan’s removal marked a major turnaround for Munir, whom Trump has called his favourite Field Marshal. In 2029, Imran Khan sacked Munir as the chief of ISI, Pakistan’s powerful spy service. Imran Khan has alleged that Munir traveled to London after his sacking and met with Nawaz Sharif while the former Pakistani prime minister was in self-imposed exile in London to avoid a corruption sentence. Imran Khan has said the meeting marked the beginning of ‘the London Plan’, or an understanding between Munir, Sharif, and members of Pakistan’s senior judiciary. Munir was allegedly elevated to the army chief’s post as part of an alleged plan to dismantle Khan’s government and his party.
Sharif’s convictions were subsequently vacated within weeks of his return to Pakistan in October 2023. His younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif, was again made the prime minister in February 2024 as Imran Khan remained in prison, refusing to strike deals that his opponents in similar situations have previously done.
