VIENNA — After nearly three weeks in Vienna this round, two years of intensive negotiations and two major extensions of an interim deal, Iran and six world powers were finally able to strike a final nuclear deal in the early morning on July 14. By the time one senior US official shared the news with his colleagues after midnight July 14, they were too tired to be triumphant, he said.
But American, European and Iranian diplomats rallied after a couple hours of sleep to express the hope that the nuclear agreement announced July 14 would not only be durable in reassuring the international community that Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapons capability, but that the successful nuclear negotiations could help open a new chapter in relations between Iran and the international community after a tense decade fraught with hostility and mistrust.