WASHINGTON—Many paths led to the international agreement to temporarily curb Iran’s nuclear program: secret meetings in Oman, formal negotiations in Geneva — and a quiet encounter in New York involving two diplomats and an exquisite silver chalice. The latter session led to the return of the chalice to Iran, where officials hailed it as a gesture of friendship by the United States.

“I wasn’t sure we could pull it off,” said the diplomat at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations who devised a way to work around a 30-year absence in formal relations. “They don’t talk to us. We don’t talk to them.”

The diplomat has operated under rules that barred most contact with Iranian officials for his entire career. Even now, because of the sensitivity of relations between the two countries, he was allowed to discuss the exchange only on condition that he and others involved not be identified.

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The episode began during the summer, when the Obama administration’s Middle East experts met to debate a delicate matter of diplomacy: how to acknowledge the election of Iran’s moderate new president, Hassan Rouhani, in a way that might convey goodwill and show respect to the Iranian people.

An Iran specialist came up with the idea of returning the silver ceremonial chalice, which officials believe was looted from an Iranian cave and imported illegally. It was seized by U.S. customs in 2003. For a decade, Iran had sought return of the chalice, which officials there regarded as part of the country’s cultural heritage. Meeting that demand, the Americans thought, could build goodwill for the U.S. and thereby strengthen Rouhani, who had won the presidency in part by promising to improve relations.

Bolstering Rouhani, they thought, would be key to reaching any deal on the nuclear program, which hardliners in both Iran and the United States were sure to oppose.

“This wouldn’t just be a gesture for government officials,” said a senior administration official who took part in the meeting. “This would be a gesture with meaning for the people of Iran.”

Some experts believe the vessel, known as a rhyton, was crafted in the seventh century B.C. in what later became the Persian Empire, now Iran. It features three trumpet-shaped cups that sprout from the body of a griffin, a fabled creature that typically has the head and wings of a bird and the body of a lion. On the chalice, the eyes are deep-set and wide open, like those of a bird of prey.

The object was allegedly part of a cache of antiquities found in a cave near the Iraqi border in the 1980s, shortly after Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

“These were great treasures from a great civilization,” said Fariborz Ghadar, an Iranian scholar who served as a deputy economic minister to Iran’s shah.

When Rouhani announced plans to attend the UN General Assembly in New York in September, Obama’s advisers decided the moment was right.

A day after Obama delivered his annual address to the world body, the American diplomat received an email from Washington. He was instructed to find a way to return the chalice to the Iranians with no fanfare before Rouhani left in two days.

The diplomat set in motion a plan he had been devising. U.S. and Iranian diplomats can talk with one another on a short list of issues, such as helping the Iranians set up a bank account or get diplomatic licence plates. The U.S. diplomat called the Iranian contact for such matters and said he had something to deliver before Rouhani left. The Iranian agreed to meet.

When the American slid the bag containing the chalice across the conference table, the Iranian diplomat looked inside and his eyes grew wide.

“He gave this lovely speech, telling me how much this meant to the Iranian people, and to him personally,” the U.S. diplomat said. “It was an important moment. I know I’ll never forget it.”

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Two days later, Rouhani accepted a telephone call from Obama, the first such high-level contact since 1979, when militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking hostages they held for 444 days.

Ghadar said the griffin’s return sent an important message to Iranians.

“The Iranians kept saying, ‘We want you to show us respect,’” he said. “This says, ‘With respect to the Iranian people, we are sending this back.’”

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