Nearly 20 months of intense negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany have finally resulted in a historic agreement to reduce Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Iranians watched the final days of these talks as intensely as others watch their countries compete in the World Cup. The decadelong nuclear dispute that resulted in Iranians becoming more isolated as sanctions slowly chipped away at their earnings, as President Hassan Rouhani put it July 14 after the deal was announced, impacted Iranian lives harder than the nuclear program.

It makes sense, then, that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the man tasked with ending this crisis by negotiating directly with Iran’s largest and most powerful enemy, the United States, would be hailed as a hero by Iranians. Those eager to see their financial lives improved and to see 36 years of tensions with the “Great Satan” greatly reduced have rejoiced.

Many Iranians taken to Twitter, tweeting #IranWinsPeace in praise of the country’s diplomatic efforts to end a crisis that some feared could only end in war. One popular tweet came from Iranian journalist Rasoul Majidi, who recalled that Zarif was also one of the main negotiators involved in ending the Iran-Iraq War, which devastated the country economically. Another Iranian journalist, Mohammad Eslami, who covered the talks in Vienna, tweeted that he will tell his grandchildren about the day of the agreement.

Iranian praise of Zarif’s efforts over these past 20 months has not been confined to social media. Iran’s Reformist media outlets have contributed to a level of myth-making around the Western-educated minister not seen in many years, with comparisons to Iran’s nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who was overthrown in a Western-backed coup; the mythical archer Arash, who mapped the Persian empire’s borders with his bow and arrow; and even Amir Kabir, who attempted to modernize the country under the Qajars.