Iran's negotiators talk peace in Doha
Iranian negotiators held a third day of talks with Qatari mediators in Doha on Nov. 1 aimed at ending the eight-month U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the discussions were continuing with no final conclusion. One proposal under discussion would reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days of a deal. Read at Reuters via CNBC →
The Peace of Westphalia
What happened then
For five years, envoys from across Europe negotiated an end to the Thirty Years' War in two Westphalian towns: Catholic powers at Münster, Protestant powers at Osnabrück. At Münster the talks ran through mediators, the papal nuncio Fabio Chigi and the Venetian diplomat Alvise Contarini, so rival delegations often didn't have to face each other directly.
What caused it
The war began in 1618 with a Protestant revolt in Bohemia against the Catholic Habsburgs and grew into a continental struggle over religion and power. It drew in Denmark, Sweden and Catholic France, which fought on the Protestant side against the Habsburgs. Large parts of Germany lost a third or more of their people.
How it was resolved
The treaties signed on Oct. 24, 1648, extended legal recognition to Calvinists alongside Lutherans and Catholics, fixed church property by the situation in 1624, and recognized Swiss independence. Spain had already recognized the Dutch Republic in the Peace of Münster earlier that year.
How it turned out
Pope Innocent X protested the religious terms, but they held. Religion largely stopped being a cause of war between German states. The peace wasn't total: France and Spain kept fighting until 1659. Westphalia is still the classic case of mediators turning a war nobody could win into a settlement everyone could sign.
Sources: Britannica: Peace of Westphalia · Wikipedia: Peace of Westphalia · Wikipedia: Thirty Years' War
Further reading: The Thirty Years War by C. V. Wedgwood