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Lucerne

2026 · Four photographs from Lucerne — setting up the live link, and the frame as it went to air.

As correspondent for OPEN, Argyris Dinopoulos covered what peace talks there were between the Americans and the Iranians, from 18 to 22 June 2026, in Lucerne, Switzerland, at the luxury Bürgenstock resort.

Press access to the hotel — isolated in any case by its position — was forbidden and the scope for gathering information was narrow, so the correspondents fell back on "secondary" sources: junior members of the delegations, and diplomatic sources within Switzerland itself.

The peace process after Lucerne — where the United States had been represented by the vice-president himself, JD Vance — was not encouraging, since fresh military operations followed on both sides.

The Bürgenstock's unhappy diplomatic tradition, in other words, continued — for it was in this same tourist resort that the Annan Plan for Cyprus foundered, in 2004, and the peace conference on Ukraine, in 2024.

Towards the seventh art, by contrast, the Bürgenstock proved hospitable, since Sean Connery and his co-stars stayed there during the filming of Goldfinger, in 1964.

4 photographs · Click a photograph to enlarge.