In what is being hailed as a groundbreaking and historic step, Iran and six world powers including the U.S. agreed to a nuclear deal Saturday that will see a portion of crippling sanctions lifted off of Iran in exchange for a reduction of uranium enrichment in the country’s energy program.

As Reuters reports, the long sought negotiation, which on many occasions looked as though it would crumble, could signal “the start of a game-changing rapprochement that could ease the risk of a wider Middle East war.”

And as Middle East analyst Juan Cole writes Sunday, “The decade-long Neoconservative plot to take the United States to war against Iran appears to have been foiled.”

However, the deal made between the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia and Iran is not the end of negotiations between the countries and is rather, as Cole writes, “actually an agreement to negotiate, and the hard bargaining is yet to come.”

The agreement spans over the course of six months in which a more permanent resolution will be negotiated.

In the meantime, the U.S. will loosen roughly $7 billion worth of economic sanctions on Iran—although this is just a “fraction” of total sanctions imposed on the country as President Obama clarified—in exchange for a freeze of Iranian enrichment activities at their present non-threatening level amongst other demands limiting their nuclear capabilities.

The International Atomic Energy Agency will also be allowed to inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities regularly.