37 top US scientists urge Trump to abide by Iran nuclear deal

EghtesadOnline: Dozens of the US top scientists wrote to President-elect Donald Trump on Monday to urge him not to dismantle the Iran deal.

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04 January 2017

“We urge you to preserve this critical US strategic asset,” the US newspaper the New York Times quoted the letter as reading.

The 37 signatories included Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms, former White House science advisers and the chief executive of the world’s largest general society of scientists, ILNA reported.

According to the American newspaper, the letter was organized by 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.

During the presidential election campaign, Trump called the Iran accord “the worst deal ever negotiated.”

In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, he declared that his “No. 1 priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal” and argued that Tehran had outmaneuvered Washington in winning concessions.

The letter to Trump says its objective is to “provide our assessment” of the Iran deal since it was put in effect nearly a year ago.

On Jan. 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the technical body in Vienna that oversees the accord with teams of inspectors it has sent to Iran, gave its approval, saying Tehran had curbed its nuclear program enough to begin receiving relief from longstanding sanctions.

In Monday’s letter, the scientists and nuclear experts noted that the accord takes no options off the table for Mr. Trump or any future president.

Many of the 37 signatories were among the 29 who praised the accord in a letter to President Obama in August 2015, a month after the deal was signed.