Pakistan, June 16 -- There are moments in diplomacy when credit does not have to be claimed because the record speaks loudly enough. The emerging US-Iran agreement is one such moment for Pakistan. After over a hundred days of war, blockade and regional panic, the first serious path away from a wider Middle Eastern catastrophe has come through a channel Islamabad helped keep alive when direct trust between Washington and Tehran had all but collapsed.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was right to say that a "final, agreed upon text" had been reached and that "Peace has never been this close as it is now." That was not empty triumphalism. It was the statement of a country that had spent critical weeks carrying messages, absorbing pressure, coo...