That the USA and Iran are not exactly on best terms is a well known fact, and the events of the last few weeks certainly have not helped deescalate the situation. What is less well known, however, is that since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the US and Iran use a secret back channel through the Swiss embassy in Tehran to exchange messages.
So also at the beginning of January, as reports the Wall Street Journal, when shortly after the assassination of Maj. Gen. Soleimani in Baghdad the encrypted fax machine with secure lines to the Foreign Ministry in Bern and the Swiss Embassy in Washington sprung to life and delivered a message by the US authorities for the attention of the Iranian government: Don’t escalate.
More messages were apparently exchanged in the following days, all much more measured in tone than the firebrand rhetoric used by both sides publicly. And this channel also facilitated the very secret exchange of two prisoners between the US and Iran in early December at Zurich airport.
Switzerland is involved in several more of these intermediary roles, such as representing Iran in Saudi Arabia, Georgia in Russia and Turkey in Libya. President Trump also asked Switzerland to represent the US in Venezuela, a reply from President Maduro however is apparently still pending.
So other than banks, cheese, chocolate and cuckoo-clocks, Switzerland as a neutral country has also its diplomacy to offer. And there is no doubt we will never know how many conflicts have been avoided or prevented from escalating thanks to the discreet workings of the diplomatic corps of one of the smallest countries in the world.
The grumpy older man 