29 Top US Scientists Hail Iran Nuclear Accord in Letter to Obama
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – 29 leading American scientists wrote to US President Barack Obama and praised the conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and major world powers.
29 America’s top scientists, including Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms and former White House science advisers wrote a letter to President Obama on Saturday to hail the Iran nuclear accord, The New York Times reported.
The scientists called the agreement “innovative” and “stringent”.
“We congratulate you and your team,” the letter said in its opening to President Obama, adding that the Iran accord “will advance the cause of peace and security in the Middle East and can serve as a guidepost for future nonproliferation agreements.”
The body of the letter praises the technical features of the Iran accord and offers tacit refutation to recent criticisms on such issues as verification and provisions for investigating what specialists see as evidence of Iran’s past research on nuclear arms.
The first signature on the letter is from Richard L. Garwin, a physicist who helped design the world’s first hydrogen bomb and has long advised Washington on nuclear weapons and arms control. He is among the last living physicists who helped usher in the nuclear age.
Also signing is Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who, from 1986 to 1997, directed the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb. The facility produced designs for most of the arms now in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Other prominent signatories include Freeman Dyson of Princeton, Sidney Drell of Stanford and Rush D. Holt, a physicist and former member of Congress who now leads the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.
The two-page letter came as the Congress and Israel’s main lobbying group, AIPAC, are making all-out effort to derail the agreement.
Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) on July 14 reached a conclusion on a lasting nuclear agreement that would terminate all sanctions imposed on Tehran over its nuclear energy program after coming into force.
The 159-page deal has its own opponents and proponents both in Iran and the other countries that are parties to the JCPOA, particularly the US.
While the United Nations Security Council has adopted a resolution to endorse the deal, the text of the document needs to be ratified by both Iran's Parliament and the US Congress.
