Vienna, the capital city of Austria, mostly known for its intricate architecture and cultural history of art and music for many years, was also the venue for critical negotiations between members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany (known as the P5+1) and Iran , over the latter's nuclear programme. In July 2015, the P5+1 and Tehran reached an agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or the JCPOA) , which was hailed as a victory of diplomacy over conflict to manage a delicate reality of the nuclearisation of a volatile Middle East . The Idea Behind The Deal Today, 2015 seems like a lifetime ago, and the future of the JCPOA is bleak . By no means was the deal a perfect one. It was perhaps never meant to be perfect either. The idea behind the arrangement was to avoid conflict and find a political middle path to end not just a nuclear impasse but decades of isolation for Tehran. In exchange for the checks and balances implemented by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , Iran would benefit from the opening of its economy to global trade. However, everything changed in 2018, when newly empowered US President Donald Trump , who had for long been a critic of the deal, withdrew from it. Interestingly, access to nuclear technologies is not a new area of contestation for Iran. In fact, its first nuclear reactor to go critical in 1967 was provided by the US, as part of its Atoms For Peace construct put forward by former US president Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953.
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