Iran and Six Powers Reach a Nuclear Deal in Vienna

On 14 July 2015, negotiators meeting at the Palais Coburg in Vienna finalized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known as the JCPOA or the Iran nuclear deal. The pact brought together Iran and the P5+1, which comprised the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council alongside Germany, with the European Union facilitating the process. The accord culminated twenty months of intense diplomacy following an interim arrangement adopted in late 2013, seeking to resolve more than a decade of international friction concerning Iran's atomic development.

Iran had initially ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1970, receiving assistance under the American Atoms for Peace program. Disrupted by the 1979 Iranian Revolution, nuclear research resumed in the late 1980s with external technical support. Major tensions arose in 2002 after dissident disclosures revealed undeclared installations at Arak and Natanz. A sequence of diplomatic initiatives by European powers collapsed, prompting the United Nations Security Council to adopt multiple punitive resolutions between 2006 and 2010 demanding the cessation of enrichment activities.