Diplomacy is the art of not going to war, and as for most endeavours aimed at stopping something else from happening, its failures are more noticeable than its successes. But 2015 provided a startling exception.
The multinational agreement curbing Iran nuclear programme, struck in Vienna on 14 July, stopped a drift to conflict that could have overshadowed all other Middle East wars. It was arguably one of the most significant diplomatic achievements since the cold war.
Everything about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – starting with its name and acronym – helps illustrate why diplomacy struggles to capture the public’s imagination. The agreement is 109 pages of dense, arcane and technical prose, put together word by word over nearly two years, mostly in featureless hotel conference rooms in Switzerland and Austria.
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