Reports indicate that Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir, during his September 2025 meeting with US President Donald Trump, proposed that the US build a US$1.2 billion ‘civilian’ deep-water port at Pasni, along with a rail link into Pakistan’s mineral heartland of Baluchistan.
Apparently, Pakistan also offered to allow the US to operate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from Pasni. It would be recalled that the US’s CIA used to operate armed UAVs from Shamsi airfield (near Quetta) for counter-terrorism operations till Pakistan evicted them after the US’ air-attack on Pakistani Post “Salala” in November 2011.
Ostensibly, Munir’s proposal seems to have two broad components:
Lure US companies into investing in the exploitation of “critical minerals,” particularly Rare Earth Elements (RREs). In early 2025, PM Shehbaz Sharif had claimed that Pakistan possessed mineral reserves worth trillions of dollars, most of them in the insurgency-hit province of Balochistan, and that foreign investment in this sector could alleviate Pakistan economic woes.
The second component is the offer of Pasni as a strategic port to the US. Given the recent developments, especially after the Israeli attack on Doha, the US could, if it desired, find Pasni useful as a military base for potential operations against Iran, in the Levant, and for surveillance in the Northern Arabian Sea (NAS). However, the offer isn’t as simple as it looks.