ABSTRACT
On 24 November 2013, the Geneva Joint Plan of Action (JPA) was signed between Iran and the P5+1, the first international agreement between the United States and Iran in over three decades. On the surface, the negotiations proceeded relatively smoothly, with the interlocutors arriving at a deal after just three rounds of dialogue. Within hours of the deal announcement however, the Associated Press revealed that the United States and Iran had been involved in backchannel negotiations, having secretly met approximately five times since March 2013 (Klapper et al. 2013a).
