I am amazed pakistanies come up with strange logics ,since Iranian president came to Pakistan first that makes Iranians attaching more importance to Pakistan than others,yes they do want better relations with Pakistan and that's the case with every other nation. now apply the same logic with Chinese president and Pm they came to every country in sub continent before the president came to pakistan .
regarding economy Iran will be doing better than Pakistan ,unders years of sanctions they built their part of pipeline and Pakistan has not. not since the sanction are gone you don't have that excuse as well.
first let's take baby steps then we can think of running
we dont really care son that if we have friendly neighbors or not per say. We can defend ourselves.
The only WOT and poor leadership put us back in economics before that under mushy we reached 8% growth rate around 2005 or 2007. That same 8% that even u reached after us.
Plus if u look our country resources wise its in the top 5. Some of the largest reserves of natural resources r found in our country, be it Gold, coal, oil, salt etc since we actually share our borders with middle east. And the very fact that because of poor leadership no one has bothered extracting them out for decades n decades.
We really r a self sufficient country who isnt per say dependent on its neighbors. Plus not only that we r a 8th largest country too in the planet that means a strong consumer market of 200 million. While that iran is only 80 million.
Yes Iran has potential and will grow economically. But if u think that they can anyway compete with us or steal our share in the economical or market pie then yr dead wrong.
Above all we r also 7th largest armed forces backed by nuclear arsenal which according to americans will be 3rd largest in a decade. So even if all of these Iran n Afghanistan remain hostile then their collective strength isnt a match for our forces n fire power. Remember our forces n fire power is make by keeping in view indian firepower n numbers. Therefore where we r today is something they may only be in next 2 decades in case of iran atleast for afghanstan well i see a proper taliban takeover in next 5 years.
So if above all is true then why are we pursuing good relations with iran or afghanistan? Its actually because we r competing with u over there for influence. According to our threat assessment yr the only country which is an enemy. And that threat from u can only be delt with is if we completely annihilate u this time.
So we dont really care about these weak countries in our west if they remain friend or foe, the only concern is regional influence of our enemy in our backyard.