It seems that never before have so many felt that they were playing such a significant role in an important diplomatic process, without having any real impact on what is happening.
On Wednesday, Nov. 20, the representatives of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany and the European Union will gather in Geneva across from Iran’s negotiating team to try to agree on the details of a nuclear deal the sides have formulated during two previous rounds of talks. According to a briefing by US officials, the subject of discussion is the document that the powers had agreed upon and presented to the Iranians at the end of the second round before dawn on Nov. 9. In the hours preceding the nighttime drama at the Intercontinental Hotel, it seemed that the agreement was ready for the arrival of US Secretary of State John Kerry and European foreign ministers for a signing ceremony. The Iranians, however, asked for time to return to Tehran for consultations.
During the first round of talks (Oct. 15-16), I was at the Geneva conference center where the journalists covering the renewed negotiations were gathered. After the second round, I followed the negotiations at a distance through classic journalistic means and through social media. These two vantage points allowed me to analyze the conduct of the two sides. In Geneva I witnessed Iranian public diplomacy in action, and later on I saw how it had succeeded in influencing the talks and creating a particular atmosphere.
Despite the dire economic data Iran faces because of the sanctions the United States and others have imposed on it, the Iranians did not appear as if they had arrived at the negotiations in a position of inferiority. The new negotiators brought with them a new spirit of goodwill accompanied by strong gusts of optimism. It is not yet known to what degree this optimism will manifest around the negotiations table in discussions over Iran's nuclear program, but the Iranians made sure to spread it through intimate conversations in the corridors with the hundreds of journalists who were in Geneva to cover the historic event.
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