President Barack Obama received a letter Saturday from 29 leading U.S. scientists, including Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms and former White House science advisers, praising the Iran nuclear deal and calling it innovative and stringent.
“This is an innovative agreement, with much more stringent constraints than any previously negotiated non-proliferation framework,” the letter read.
And here's the text of letter from 29 prominent nuclear scientists supporting #IranDeal http://t.co/f3SwaHheuw
— Stephen Walt (@stephenWalt)
August 8, 201
Most of the 29 who signed the letter are physicists, and many of them have held what the government calls Q clearances — granting access to a special category of secret information that bears on the design of nuclear arms and is considered equivalent to the military’s top secret security clearance.
The letter comes as Obama is lobbying the U.S. Congress to accept the deal, which is dominated by Republican lawmakers in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate who have expressed outright opposition to the deal.
The letter also comes few days after Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat and among the most influential Jewish voices in Washington, announced that he would vote against the deal when it is up for debate in Congress.
Send same letter to @SenSchumer? What a terrible decision for him to make against the #IranDeal. War hawks will pay! https://t.co/rkKelofGhA
— donald nguyen (@donaldnguyen5)
August 8, 201
Schumer said that his opposition to the deal stemmed from believing that the deal would give Iran a free pass to develop a nuclear weapon, an opinion he shares with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
RELATED: Top WSJ Editor Plots with Pro-Israel Group to Thwart Iran Deal
However, the leading scientists have asserted in their letter that such arguments are unfounded as the deal ensured that such scenario would not be possible.
“Some have expressed concern that the deal will free Iran to develop nuclear weapons without constraint after ten years,” the leading scientists said in their letter. “In contrast we find that the deal includes important long-term verification procedures that last until 2040, and others that last indefinitely under the NPT and its Additional Protocol.”
I would note that AIPAC sent SIXTY lobbyists to Schumer's office last week alone but that would make me anti-Semitic http://t.co/dh0WXgiFFM
— Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan)
August 8, 201
The scientists, including Richard L. Garwin, a physicist who helped design the world’s first hydrogen bomb and who has long advised Washington on nuclear weapons and arms control, said that such a deal would help “advance the cause of peace and security in the Middle East and can serve as a guidepost for future nonproliferation agreements.”
The letter also touches on the technical details of the deal and debunks recent arguments that Iran might have conducted past research on nuclear weapons.
“Concerns about clandestine activities in Iran are greatly mitigated by the dispute resolution mechanism built into the agreement,” the letter stressed.