 "Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Army Chief and Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir with US President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 26, 2025. Image Courtesy: White House")
United States President Donald Trump’s former White House doctor worked closely with Pakistan to fix up a critical mines and rare earths deal during Operation Sindoor. Ronny L Jackson was in contact with Pakistani authorities in May 2025 when a brief conflict erupted between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack.
These revelations come after filings by two of Pakistan’s hired lobbyists – Javelin Advisors LLC and Conscience Point Consulting. Islamabad had hired Trump’s former bodyguard, Keith Schiller , who co-founded the consulting firm Javelin Advisors with George Sorial, the Trump Organization’s ex-compliance chief, as its lobbyist in the US last year.
Let’s take a closer look.
Ex-White House doc helped Pakistan
According to filings by Pakistan’s two hired lobbyists in the US with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Ronny Jackson met with Pakistani authorities to discuss a rare earths deal on May 1, just days after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir, Economic Times (ET) reported.
On May 6, he held a phone call regarding tensions between India and Pakistan, as New Delhi launched Operation Sindoor on the intervening night of May 6-7.
This was followed by another call on May 16, after hostilities ended, to set up a dinner meeting to advance the proposed deal.
These meetings and conversations intensified over the month, with an important phone call taking place on May 28. This was followed by an email with a draft MoU attached to it. According to Javelin’s own submission of purpose: ‘Delivery of Proposed MoU’.
Two days later, Jackson had a phone call and exchanged texts through Javelin on ‘Rare earths development and proposed MoU’. The efforts bore fruit months later. In September 2025, a $500 million deal was finalised between US Strategic Metals and Pakistan’s Frontier Works Organisation, a military-linked entity associated with Rawalpindi’s strategic projects.
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Fara filings also show that Pakistan’s diplomatic outreach to the US during Operation Sindoor also involved two other lawmakers from Texas, both ex-Navy officers: Dan Renshaw and Morgan Luttrell, as per ET.
Renshaw also appeared on a podcast last May, where he spoke about the danger of the Indo-Pak military conflict turning nuclear, a narrative Rawalpindi wanted to push in Washington.
Who is Ronny Jackson?
Ronny Jackson, a retired Navy doctor, served in the White House Medical Unit during President George W Bush’s tenure. He was also the physician to Barack Obama in the White House.
Jackson continued in the role of physician to the US president during Trump’s first tenure that began in 2017.
In early 2018, he gained Trump’s loyalty after his lengthy press conference on the then 71-year-old Republican president’s health, praising his “good genes”. He went on to claim that Trump could have lived for 200 years if he had a healthier diet.
Two months later, Trump nominated Jackson as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. However, the Navy officer had to withdraw after reports about his misconduct in the White House, including bullying, surfaced.
In January 2019, Trump appointed him as chief medical advisor and assistant to the president.
Jackson, now a Republican Congressman from Texas, called himself a “Trump person” in his 2022 memoir. He underlined that he had stood by the president after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Jackson retired from the Navy in 2019 as Rear Admiral, but was later demoted to captain after the Pentagon found that he mistreated subordinates during his role as the White House physician. Trump has reportedly restored his rank.
Jackson once introduced a bill during Democrat Joe Biden’s term for removing Pakistan’s major non-Nato ally status. He is now helped Pakistan clinch a major minerals deal with the US.
Not just Pakistan, Jackson has been leading Trump’s mining interests in Africa. He held meetings with leaders in both Congo and Rwanda that paved the way for the Congo-Rwanda peace deal in June, which was signed in Trump’s presence. It is significant to note that the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels control the largest coltan and tungsten mining areas in Congo, which is of particular interest to Washington.
Last month at the White House Hanukkah reception, Trump lauded Jackson and, as per reports, said: “He was my White House doctor. Ronny was asked, who’s the healthiest of all? Was it Barack Hussein Obama? Was it Sleepy Joe Biden (Jackson served him when he was Obama’s vice president)? Or was it Donald Trump? And he said, ‘Trump was by far the healthiest’…I love him.”
With inputs from agencies