Earlier today, a letter on which I am a cosigner was sent to President-elect Trump encouraging him to abide by the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by President Obama. An article by New York Times reporter William Broad, noted:
Dozens of the nation’s top scientists wrote to President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday to urge him not to dismantle the Iran deal, calling it a strong bulwark against any Iranian bid to make nuclear arms. … 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.
The letter is a follow-on to one signed by much the same group and sent in August 2015 to President Obama. The new letter gives our assessment now that the agreement has been in place for almost a year and concludes:
The JCPOA does not take any options off the table for you or any future president. Indeed it makes it much easier for you to know if and when Iran heads for a bomb. It provides both time and legitimacy for an effective response. Our technical judgment is that the multilateral JCPOA provides a strong bulwark against an Iranian nuclear-weapons program. We urge you to preserve this critical U.S. strategic asset.
The book my wife and I recently completed has a short section on Iran (pages 201-210) that has some eye-opening revelations that more Americans need to understand if we are to heal our adversarial relationship with that nation. (Links for buying the book or downloading a free PDF are on its website.)
The letter to President-elect Trump is particularly important given calls for regime change by two of the men he had considered for Secretary of State: Rudolph Giuliani and John Bolton. Giuliani said, “The inevitable conclusion of all of this is, we have to have regime change,” and Bolton, “The inconvenient truth is that only military action … can accomplish what is required. … Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.”
Continuing to threaten Iran and encouraging regime change has the unintended consequence of increasing support for a bomb within Iran since that is the only way Iran can deter such actions.
Defusing the Nuclear Threat 
Thank you for the book…..actualizing the relationship part will be a challenge, but it was inspiring to read.
The international case studies especially appreciated.
Dave:,
Thanks very much for your comment. Yes, actualizing the relationship is easy to understand but hard to put into practice. That’s one reason we included the section “Why It’s a Process” (pages 38-46). As we say toward the end of that section:
“When we keep in mind that personal and societal change occur as processes, we have a more realistic, optimistic perspective at both the personal and global levels. Don’t get discouraged if you haven’t reached your goal yet. Just be patient and keep working the process.
“Viewing existential global issues through that lens significantly changes how they look. … When we look at the solutions to those problems as processes in which we’ve already made significant progress, we see a much more hopeful picture than the usual doom and gloom perspective that ignores the gains we’ve made already.”
Marty