29 US scientists write to Obama, praising Iran nuclear agreement

Twenty-nine top US scientists, including some of the world’s leading experts in the fields of nuclear science and arms control, have written to President Barack Obama to praise the nuclear agreement with Iran.

The letter was sent to Obama on Saturday from the top scientists, including Nobel laureates, original designers of nuclear weapons and former White House science advisers, according to The New York Times.

The two-page letter was written as the White House is lobbying Congress, the US public and Washington’s allies to support the nuclear accord.

The letter gives the Obama administration a boost after the blow Obama suffered on Thursday when Senator Chuck Schumer, an influential Jewish Democrat in Congress, announced he would vote against the agreement.

Schumer is a senior senator representing New York and widely expected to assume leadership of his party in the Senate.

“We congratulate you and your team,” the letter says in its opening, adding that the Iran agreement “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 calls it “innovative” and “stringent.”

The letter also refutes criticism that the Iran agreement, after 10 years, will allow Iran to potentially develop nuclear weapons without constraint. “In contrast,” it says, “we find that the deal includes important long-term verification procedures that last until 2040, and others that last indefinitely.”

The first signature on the letter is from Richard Garwin, a physicist who helped design the world’s first hydrogen bomb in 1952 and has long advised the US government on nuclear arms and weapons proliferation.

Garwin is among the last living physicists who helped usher in the nuclear age.

Most of the 29 scientists who signed the letter are physicists, including Sidney Drell of Stanford, Freeman Dyson of Princeton and Rush 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.

Also signing is Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford professor who, from 1986 to 1997, was the director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. The facility produced designs for most of the atomic weapons currently in America’s nuclear stockpile.

The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program.

Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

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