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It is done—or rather, has begun. After an April cease-fire and nearly 70 days of indirect talks brokered by Pakistan and Qatar, Iran and the United States have signed a memorandum of understanding ending their war.

This month in Switzerland, the two sides held their first round of talks under the MOU, emerging with a road map to a final agreement within 60 days; working groups on nuclear enrichment, sanctions, and implementation; and new channels to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and the Lebanon cease-fire intact. The hardest questions—the fate of Iran’s enrichment program, the scale of sanctions relief, the shape of any settlement—were deferred to that window, with Tehran insisting that implementation comes first. The blockade is lifted, and Hormuz has reopened; in the days following the news, the Iranian rial gained more than 15 percent against the dollar.

It is done—or rather, has begun. After an April cease-fire and nearly 70 days of indirect talks brokered by Pakistan and Qatar, Iran and the United States have signed a memorandum of understanding ending their war.

This month in Switzerland, the two sides held their first round of talks under the MOU, emerging with a road map to a final agreement within 60 days; working groups on nuclear enrichment, sanctions, and implementation; and new channels to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and the Lebanon cease-fire intact. The hardest questions—the fate of Iran’s enrichment program, the scale of sanctions relief, the shape of any settlement—were deferred to that window, with Tehran insisting that implementation comes first. The blockade is lifted, and Hormuz has reopened; in the days following the news, the Iranian rial gained more than 15 percent against the dollar.

To Iran’s adversaries and many pundits, the way the deal came together confirms a verdict advanced recently, including in these pages: that the war has produced an Iranian regime more united than at any point in recent memory. Iranian commentary across the political spectrum, too, has described a real closing of ranks: Former lawmaker Mansour Arami spoke in April of a rare alignment across political, military, and social spheres, all operating within the regime’s framework.

There are a number of data points to support this argument. The entire establishment more or less lined up behind the agreement; the foreign ministry says every organ of the state acted “with one voice”; hard-line newspapers insist the talks proceeded under the personal oversight of the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei; and Esmail Qaani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, has gone so far as to call the country’s negotiators and its soldiers alike men cut from the same cloth of “armed resistance.”

Clearly, Iran’s diplomats carry a mandate from the top of the system. That deserves to be stated plainly because it should retire an assumption common in Western capitals that the negotiating team is an exposed civilian faction that the regime’s hard-liners could disown at will. It is not. But the consensus on display is a consensus to stop a war no one could win and on terms Tehran can present as a........

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