Islamabad, Pakistan – When Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meets US President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, he will be carrying with him a promise unlike any that his predecessors have taken to such meetings.

For several years, Pakistan’s primary strategic value to the United States was its role as a security partner, first during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then during the so-called “war on terror”.

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That relationship slowly collapsed amid accusations from growing sections of the US strategic community – and Trump himself – that Islamabad was duplicitous and couldn’t be trusted, especially after American forces found Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

But a high-profile signing ceremony at the Pakistan PM’s residence earlier this month offered a glimpse of the country’s new offer to the US. On September 8, two memorandums of understanding (MoUs) were signed in a ceremony attended by Sharif and Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, alongside senior officials from both Islamabad and Washington.

The headline agreement – on Pakistan supplying critical minerals and rare earth elements to the US – followed Trump’s July pledge to work with Pakistan to develop its “massive oil reserves”. A US firm is investing $500m in Pakistani minerals.

So far, Pakistan’s approach appears to be working, amid a broader rapprochement with the US that few analysts had predicted when Trump – who in 2018 claimed that Islamabad had given Washington “nothing but lies and deceit” – returned to office earlier this year.

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Trump thanked Pakistan in a March speech to the US Congress for its support in combatting “terrorism”, and his military leaders have likewise credited the country for their partnership. Pakistan publicly endorsed the US president for a Nobel Prize in June after a four-day conflict with India that Washington and Islamabad insist ended with his mediation.

The 19 percent tariff rate that Trump has imposed on Pakistani goods is the lowest of all South Asian nations — India, Pakistan’s rival and America’s preferred partner over the past two decades, has been slapped with 50 percent tariffs. The US president has hosted Munir at the White House — the first time ever for a Pakistani army chief who is not head of state. And Sharif on Thursday will become the first Pakistani PM since 2019 to visit the US president’s residence.

It is a striking pivot from Trump, and analysts say that Pakistan’s minerals promise could play a key catalyst role. Washington is seeking sources of minerals and rare earths it views as essential to industry, defence and the clean-energy transition, and Pakistan may be an attractive, if as yet under-tested, supplier.

“This is a strategic handshake wrapped in economic opportunity, resource diplomacy and symbolic recalibration,” a former Pakistani three-star army general told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

“This isn’t just about rocks in the ground. It is about who controls the future’s building blocks. For Pakistan, it’s a chance to claim its mineral narrative and tie it to national pride and legacy. For the US, it’s a strategic move on the global chessboard of resource politics.”

From MoU to mine, what was actually agreed?

At a Pakistani minerals summit in April, PM Sharif argued that if Pakistan harvested mineral reserves he said were valued at “trillions of dollars”, it could transform its economy, which is buckling under the weight of $130bn in external debt.

Five months later, the key agreement was signed between the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) – a military-run engineering and construction organisation headed by a two-star general – and United States Strategic Metals (USSM), a Missouri-based company founded in 2018.

USSM says it specialises in recycling critical minerals from spent lithium-ion batteries and works on mining metals such as cobalt, nickel and copper.

According to Sharif’s office, the partnership will immediately begin the export of “readily available minerals” – including antimony, copper, gold, tungsten and rare earth elements – from Pakistan.

The statement added that the MoU aims to spur the eventual establishment of a specialised refinery in Pakistan to produce “intermediate and finished products dedicated to meeting the rapidly growing demand of the US market”.

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“The first phase of this deal is envisaged at approximately $500 million of investments into Pakistan’s critical minerals sector,” the prime minister’s office said, adding that subsequent steps will focus on exploring the country’s wider resource base to identify, extract and process critical minerals.

The MoU is not a binding mining licence, rather, analysts say, it is an early-stage instrument that signals interest.

“From the USSM’s side an MoU gives goodwill at early stage in potential projects that may come, while the broad nature of the MoU means that whatever deposits show the most potential quickest can come online quickly,” Zain Kazmi, chief operating officer of Islamabad-based Capital Strategies Group and an adviser to the Washington DC-based Critical Minerals Forum, told Al Jazeera.

A senior government geologist with knowledge about the arrangement said the focus is on “strategic minerals and rare earth elements” and pointed to deposits such as copper and antimony that the FWO is already working on.

“FWO is already operating mines in Waziristan region in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. They also have exploration licence in Chaghi Belt in Balochistan province, as well as in Gilgit-Baltistan region,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media.

But he cautioned that mineral projects are typically long-term ventures, lasting for “five to 15 years”.

“Minerals development projects take a long term before they come to fruition. However, it appears that under this MoU, the plan is to first export antimony, copper and other readily available products, followed by the medium-term project of installing processing plants, and lastly, exploration in various areas,” he said.

What are rare earth elements and critical minerals?

A fast-moving technological race between China and the United States has driven intense demand for rare earth elements and other critical minerals.

Rare earth minerals are a group of 17 metallic elements used in everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to semiconductors and defence systems.

Despite their name, they are not especially rare in the Earth’s crust. But they are often dispersed or mixed with other elements, which makes extraction technically difficult and costly.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Department of the Interior maintain a list of “critical minerals” for the United States – 54 elements on the latest list include copper and silver – many of which are essential to the country’s clean energy transition and high-tech manufacturing.

In its minerals commodities summary in January 2025, the USGS listed 15 countries and territories with mapped rare earth deposits; Pakistan was not among them.

From Balochistan to Gilgit – where are Pakistan’s minerals?

Moin Raza Khan, a former managing director of state-owned Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) and now a Karachi-based consultant, estimates that roughly a quarter of Pakistan’s landmass contains rock formations with a “strong likelihood” of hosting critical minerals.

Much of the potential lies in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the remote highlands of Gilgit-Baltistan – areas that face harsh terrain, grave security concerns, or both.

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As Khan put it, some regions suffer “either a terrain problem, or political problem, or both”.

Balochistan, home to about 15 million people in a country of roughly 240 million, is Pakistan’s poorest province despite huge natural-resource wealth.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has also seen surges in violence. Islamabad alleges that armed groups cross from Afghanistan into tribal districts, including South and North Waziristan, which are believed to hold vast mineral reserves.

The most important, economically, are copper deposits in Balochistan: Saindak and Reko Diq.

Saindak, near the Iran border, was discovered in the 1970s and commercial mining began under China’s Metallurgical Construction Corporation (MCC) in the early 2000s. Copper exports data in 2024 show Saindak contributed $842m, up from $777m the year before.

Reko Diq, situated less than 150 kilometres from Saindak, is widely regarded as one of the world’s largest underdeveloped deposits of rocks laden with copper and gold.

It is being developed by Canada’s Barrick Mining, which holds a 50 percent stake while the rest is divided between federal and provincial governments and state entities.

“Reko Diq is one of the world’s largest underdeveloped copper-gold deposits. The proved and probable reserves are estimated to contain roughly 15 million tonnes of copper and 26 million ounces of gold,” Khan told Al Jazeera.

He estimated the value of contained metal in the host rock at over $190bn, with copper accounting for roughly $138bn and gold about $53bn.

But hard data are limited. Muhammad Yaqub Shah, a former director of the Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation, said that geologically, Pakistan likely hosts major mineral prospects.

But he added that detailed exploration is required to systematically and scientifically explore and evaluate the potential.

Kazmi, the adviser for Critical Minerals Forum, agreed.

“In terms of deposit sizes, there are no absolutely measured reserves in Pakistan besides Reko Diq. The minerals industry in Pakistan is nascent and growing, all the projects are greenfield, so it will take time to verify these reserves,” he said.

Promises versus proof

While the government lauded the MoU, Al Jazeera’s questions for comment from the petroleum minister and other officials went unanswered.

Critics warned about “grand estimations” and urged caution, pointing to a string of past claims that have failed to materialise.

That scepticism is rooted in precedent. On July 31, Trump posted on Truth Social that the US would work with Pakistan to develop its oil reserves, a declaration that left many observers perplexed, given Pakistan’s limited known crude deposits.

Pakistan spends roughly 31 percent of its import bill on fuel, and imports about 80 percent of its petroleum needs.

In May 2019, then-Prime Minister Imran Khan announced a consortium drilling off the Arabian Sea had hit an “oil and gas jackpot” that would eliminate Pakistan’s fuel needs for decades.

But the wells were soon abandoned when they failed to yield commercially viable reserves.

Similar, unverified claims resurfaced in September 2024 when a senior military official spoke of discoveries that could “change the destiny of the country”.

Earlier this month, a retired naval officer said Pakistan and China had jointly identified potentially large gas deposits during a survey – claims that, so far, remain unverified.

Meanwhile, Khan, the Karachi-based analyst, questioned whether USSM, the US firm, had the expertise to execute the exploration and mining needed for Pakistan to deliver its mineral dreams.

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USSM’s own profile emphasises recycling metals from spent lithium-ion batteries and reprocessing tailings from cobalt mines at its Missouri headquarters. Tailings are the leftover material after ore processing that can contain residual traces of other metals, potentially including rare earth elements.

“It appears that at least for now, all they are looking for is to export the concentrate, and act like a trading company rather than a mining company,” Khan said.

Still, Kazmi said, an MoU with USSM can serve as a useful early-stage signal that attracts larger, higher-quality investors. It marks “the arrival of high-quality interest in the mining sector in the country and opens the door for other top-tier mineral processors and mining investors to enter the Pakistani market,” he said.

Minerals and geopolitical balancing act

But the critical minerals deal with the US could also test Pakistan’s geopolitical balancing capabilities like never before.

Over the past decade, Pakistan has deepened economic ties with China through the $62bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a network of infrastructure projects.

Chinese investments, particularly in Balochistan, have provoked local resentment, where residents accuse Chinese firms of “stealing local resources,” and nationalist rebel fighters have repeatedly attacked Chinese personnel and installations.

Official figures suggest nearly 20,000 Chinese nationals live in Pakistan. At least 20 have been killed since 2021 in attacks tied to these projects.

For Beijing, security is a primary concern, and the arrival of US investment in the same regions could complicate an already fraught picture in provinces such as Balochistan, analysts caution.

Uzair Younus, principal at the US advisory firm The Asia Group, said the minerals MoU signals Pakistan’s openness to Western investors in strategic sectors and that Balochistan will not be an exclusive preserve for Chinese influence.

Still, “for the Chinese, this is a net positive development too as American interests in these sectors can also help alleviate the insurgency, fuelled by regional proxies, in Balochistan,” Younus told Al Jazeera. Simply put, any attackers would need to risk the ire of not just Pakistan and China, but the US, too.

If the local economy gains from US investments, that, too, would benefit China, say experts.

“This would allow unlocking of commercial opportunities which are key for sustaining payments to Chinese investors and creditors that have lent money to Pakistan for infrastructure projects,” Younus said.

Islamabad-based security analyst Amir Rana said that “while China might have been hoping that they could have had the monopoly on Pakistan’s minerals,” he does not foresee the relationship  “being harmed in any major way”.

Kazmi argued that commercial prudence favours working with multiple partners.

“No country has been given carte blanche on Pakistani resources besides Pakistan itself, which holds an inalienable right to those deposits,” he said.

Communities, security and revenue-sharing

However, Pakistan has a long road ahead in terms of showcasing tangible progress and outcomes that lead to commercial payoffs for investors, according to Washington, DC-based Younus.

“If the country fails to do so, the perspective that Pakistan’s dysfunction makes it a terrible place for doing business will be reinforced further,” he said.

The retired army general who spoke on condition of anonymity added that the real transformation of regions racked by violence and instability will require “more than just foreign capital”.

“Achieving success in this sector demands a shift from militarised control to inclusive development, where local communities are empowered as stewards of their land, royalties are transparently shared, and infrastructure serves both extraction and dignity,” the general said.

“Only by reframing mineral wealth as a national legacy, rather than a contested commodity, can Pakistan turn its buried potential into a foundation for unity, sovereignty and regional influence.”