NEW YORK - Twenty-nine top US nuclear scientists - including five Nobel laureates - sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Saturday praising the nuclear deal reached between world powers and Iran in July.
According to the New York Times, the letter used the terms "innovative" and "stringent" more than half-a-dozen times, saying the deal can serve "as a guidepost for future nonproliferation agreements."
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.
According to the letter, Iran was "only a few weeks" away from producing enough fuel for nuclear weapons before curbing its nuclear programs during the negotiations with world powers. The New York Times noted that many of the letter's signatories have previously advised Washington on nuclear arms and arms control, and that most of them have held an equivalent of the military's top secret security clearance with regards to the design of nuclear weapons.
The scientists also praised the section of the deal which states that inspectors must be allowed to enter any suspect facility in Iran within at most 24 days, calling it "unprecedented." The letter also noted that the deal bans research on nuclear weapons "rather than only their manufacture," adding that contrary to criticism that Iran will be allowed to pursue nuclear arms without constraint after 10 years, the deal "includes important long-term verification procedures that last until 2040, and others that last indefinitely.”
The five Noble laureates who signed the letter were Leon Cooper of Brown University; Sheldon Glashow of Boston University; David Gross of the University of California, Santa Barbara; Burton Richter of Stanford; and Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other notable signatories were Freeman Dyson of Princeton, Sidney Drell of Stanford and Rush Holt, a physicist and former member of Congress.
The US Congress has until September 17 to vote on a resolution of disapproval of the Iran deal, which would eliminate Obama's ability to waive all sanctions on Iran imposed by the U.S. Congress, a key component of the agreement. Obama has promised a veto if it is passed by the House and Senate.