Pakistan, Feb. 12 -- Pakistan's latest round of outreach to Washington and Tehran is not performative idealism. It is the instinct of someone living next door to a tinderbox. Its top officials, from Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, have repeatedly urged dialogue over confrontation at every turn, projecting the familiar line that Pakistan will play "whatever role could be played" to cool tempers.

That Pakistan has been formally invited twice to join the Iran-US nuclear talks is unprecedented, especially considering how it has, until now, quietly, if at all, and almost never in the open, facilitated backchannel contacts. But those very nuclear negotiations remain on the brink of collapse.

The Oman channel is th...