To make sure that the historic nuclear deal was sealed in Vienna, the Austrian government was willing to go all out to make the negotiators comfortable at the resplendent Palais Coburg hotel, including footing all their bills.
The Austrians made the country’s trademark wafer biscuits and chocolate Mozart balls freely available. They hosted lavish brunches, and provided buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.
Despite the profusion of high-class local cuisine available, however, many of the delegations fell back on their own comfort foods to get them through the long days and nights of talks. The Iranians had green raisins and pistachios.
The Americans got through more than 10lbs of strawberry flavoured Twizzlers , 20lbs of cheese strings, and 30lbs of mixed nuts and raisins. Each time the team of the British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, made a trip back to London, it returned to Vienna laden with biscuits from Marks & Spencer.
At one point the French put that munificence to the test by staging a raid on the Coburg’s famous wine cellars to find something special to have with dinner. Despite the comforts of the Coburg, the 18 days of talks were a gruelling challenge for the negotiators, most of whom were well over 60 years old and suffering from a variety of ailments as the talks went on.
To add to the discomfort, the heat of Vienna’s summer surged, and it appeared to be beyond the capabilities of the hotel’s air conditioning system to tame it. From time to time, tempers frayed. At one point Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, grew tired of the moralising from the men and women ranged around the table, and snapped.
“I should take you all to the international court for your support of Saddam Hussain!” he shouted. He was talking about the brutal Iran-Iraq war three decades earlier.
In Vienna, an impasse over conventional arms threatened to derail a historic deal on nuclear weapons. In the days preceding the deal’s announcement, the row over the arms embargo and the UN security council resolution enshrining it took the negotiations to the brink of failure. The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, warned that the western negotiators could walk away. Zarif, sensing it was an empty threat, said: “Go ahead, but don’t threaten an Iranian.” The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, who was backing Zarif on the embargo, chimed in with: “And don’t threaten a Russian.” The comment was quickly leaked by the Russian delegation. It was tailor made for his image at home - an assertive nationalist.
The Iranians had no problem either with the story getting out. It showed Zarif sticking up for national dignity, and would help shield him against the hardline attacks that were sure to follow a deal.
Mogherini handled the incident lightly, later telling CNN : “You wouldn’t expect an Iranian and an Italian negotiating in a cold way. That is, I would say, part of our culture ... So sometimes we have heated exchanges. But mutual respect is always there.”
The phrase “mutual respect” was echoed by many of the ministers and diplomats in Vienna. During the talks at the Coburg at the end of nearly two years of intensive diplomacy since the reformist government of Hassan Rouhani came to power in Tehran, the joint endeavour of crafting an agreement gave them common cause in the face of attacks from hardliners in the US, Iran and Israel. They could ignore the voices of the most strident critics but their leaders could not. Both Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and the US president, Barack Obama, were performing balancing acts that sometimes involved direct intervention in the negotiations. Khamenei’s speech on 23 June laying down his red lines for the talks, had the impact of tying Zarif’s hands on some issues. Similarly, the US negotiating team led by the secretary of state, John Kerry, emerged from a video conference with Obama and his national security staff on Wednesday last week, with a harder negotiating line on some issues, according to a senior Iranian official speaking the next day. In view of the intense negotiations necessary to get to a deal, and the tremendous pressures that would inevitably follow it, US allies were alarmed to witness the impact a May bicycle accident had on Kerry. It was not just that he was on crutches. In the words of one diplomat, “it was as if the energy had been sucked out of him”. In previous rounds, Kerry had been a vigorous host and cheerleader, working the room, slapping backs and driving the tempo. In Vienna, he would hobble into a room and look for the nearest chair to sit down, suddenly looking his 71 years. Kerry was not the only minister suffering from injuries at the talks. The US negotiator Wendy Sherman broke her nose and finger during the course of the negotiations. The head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, was recovering from surgery for a perforated bowel.
But Kerry’s ailment had the most impact. The sight of him limping up to the lectern before the press camped in front of the Coburg also lacked the confidence he once radiated. Increasingly, as the days wore on in Vienna, he followed the example of more introverted ministers, and had himself delivered to the hotel’s back door. Managing appearances was always going to be hard in Vienna, a city with so many layers of history, acting like a prism on the present. The white stucco neoclassical hotel itself is an embodiment of Austria’s imperial past.
The square on which it sits is named after the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, an uncomfortable fact for the delegation. The Imperial hotel where Kerry was staying, 100 metres or so from the Coburg, had once hosted Hitler. It was because of Vienna’s complex history that neither the Americans nor the Iranians were keen to conclude their negotiations there, but other factors outweighed their nervousness. Along with the Austrians’ generosity, the city is the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which would have to act as arbiter in the deal’s implementation. The 18 days in Vienna proved to be one of the most epic diplomatic marathons of modern times. At the end of it, the ministers and diplomats stumbled out into the daylight on Tuesday morning, some of them for the first time in a week. They left behind substantial bills for the Austrian government. But, as diplomats often like to point out, while peaceful negotiations are often costly, they are much cheaper than the alternative.
