Iran and P5-plus-1 sign breakthrough nuclear deal

In the darkest hours of Sunday, 24 November, after four days of intense negotiations, the announcement finally came. “We have reached an agreement,” Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif posted on Twitter at 2:03am, and other foreign ministers, emerging from the conference room in a Geneva hotel where the deal was signed, confirmed. “Now the really hard part begins,” US secretary of state John Kerry told reporters. “We know this.” The interim agreement between Iran and the world powers of the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, shepherded by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton) is intended to last six months, while the two sides seek a more permanent solution to the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme.