Dozens of the nation's top scientists wrote to President-elect Donald 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.
"We urge you to preserve this critical U.S. strategic asset," the letter read. 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.
During the 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 and could still develop nuclear arms when the pact's restrictions expire in 15 years.
The letter was organized by Richard Garwin, a physicist who helped design the world's first hydrogen bomb and has long advised Washington on nuclear weapons and arms control. He is among the last living physicists who helped usher in the nuclear age.
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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 long-standing sanctions.
The letter writers zeroed in on the dismantling of Iran's ability to purify uranium, a main fuel of nuclear arms that is considered the easiest to use. They said Tehran, as agreed, had shut down roughly two-thirds of its whirling machines for enriching uranium, had exported more than 95 percent of the material it had enriched to 4 percent and had given up its production of uranium enriched to near 20 percent, which is much closer to bomb grade.
As a result, they said, the time it would take Tehran to enrich uranium for a single nuclear weapon "has increased to many months, from just a few weeks" during the accord's negotiation. The "many months" wording is more conservative than that of the Obama administration, which hailed the deal as keeping Iran a year away from having enough nuclear fuel to make a bomb.
Still, the letter writers seemed to anticipate quibbles on the point by saying the teams of inspectors and monitoring gadgets at Iran's main enrichment plant made them "confident that no surprise breakout at this facility is possible." "Breakout" refers to a rush to build a nuclear weapon.
In summary, the letter said, the deal "has dramatically reduced the risk that Iran could suddenly produce significant quantities" of material for making nuclear arms and "lowered the pressure felt by Iran's neighbors to develop their own nuclear weapons options."
While the deal was opposed by all Republicans in the House and Senate, it is not clear whether Trump will move quickly to renege on it. Any effort by the United States to walk away from its terms, or to renegotiate it, would pave the way for Iran to insist on changes as well.
The agreement has been contentious in Iran, where clerics and opponents and President Hassan Rouhani have argued that the promised economic benefits have come far too slowly. Rouhani is facing an election this year, and if Trump dismantles the deal, it could give Rouhani's hard-line opponents an argument in favor of ousting his government.
Moreover, Trump's nominee for defense secretary, James Mattis, is likely to counsel against abandoning the deal, according to officials who have discussed it with him. It is unclear what Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil and the nominee for secretary of state, would advise.
Trump's choice for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, the retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has been a key critic of the deal. In June 2015, just before the final agreement was struck, he told a congressional committee that Iran was almost certainly hiding facilities.
Many of the 37 signatories were among the 29 who praised the accord in a letter to President Barack Obama in August 2015, a month after the deal was signed and public debate had begun on its merits.
Others who signed the new letter include Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford professor who, from 1986-97, directed the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, the birthplace of the bomb. The lab designed most of the arms now in the nation's nuclear arsenal. Rush Holt, a former congressman and nuclear physicist who now heads the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also signed.
Sidney Drell, a Stanford physicist who advised presidents from Nixon to Obama, signed the letter before dying late last month at age 90.
On a separate matter -- North Korea's claim that it's nearing nuclear-weapon capabilities -- Trump tweeted Monday that the country won't develop such a weapon capable of reaching the United States.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Sunday in his annual New Year's address that preparations for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile have "reached the final stage." He did not explicitly say a test was imminent.
Trump tweeted, "North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!"
It was unclear whether Trump meant that he would stop North Korea or he was simply doubting the country's capabilities. His aides did not immediately respond to questions seeking clarification.
Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Sunday that the president-elect won't end the onslaught of posts on Twitter that were a key feature of his campaign, even after taking on the formalized duties of the Oval Office later this month.
Tweet on Chicago
Trump also took to Twitter on Monday to address critics from his presidential campaign and to address Chicago's sharp increase in homicides in 2016.
The incoming president tweeted Monday that "various media outlets and pundits say that I thought I was going to lose the election. Wrong..."
He continued, "I thought and felt I would win big, easily over the fabled 270" electoral votes.
Trump also complained Monday about a cover photo used in a new book released by CNN. He tweeted, "Hope it does well but used worst cover photo of me!"
Regarding Chicago, which in 2016 had 762 homicides -- the most in two decades and more than the largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, combined -- Trump wrote on Twitter, "If Mayor can't do it he must ask for federal help!"
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's spokesman Adam Collins responded with a statement in which he says that if the federal government really wants to help, it can do things such as fund summer-job programs for at-risk youth and pass restrictive gun laws.
The Chicago Police Department says the city had 1,100 more shootings last year than in 2015. The statistics have put Chicago at the center of a national dialogue about gun violence.
Earlier Monday, Spicer, on Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends, defended claims by Trump, made in a Saturday interview, that he knows "things that other people don't know" when it comes to allegations of Russian hacking.
Spicer said Trump is getting national security briefings "on a daily basis" and "there doesn't seem to be conclusive evidence" that Russians were behind the hacking of Democratic emails during the election.
Spicer also dismissed on Monday a report released by the FBI and Homeland Security Department supporting the accusations against Russia, calling it a "how-to" manual on basic cybersecurity for Democrats.
In an interview on NBC's Today Show, Spicer said Obama only punished Russia after Democrat Hillary Clinton lost the election and that the recent sanctions were politically motivated.
Trump has said he will get a briefing from U.S. intelligence officials this week.
Agriculture pick
In transition news, Sonny Perdue III, the former governor of Georgia, is Trump's leading candidate to be his U.S. secretary of agriculture, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Perdue, 70, would succeed secretary Tom Vilsack. Perdue met with Trump on Nov. 30 and told reporters that they talked about agricultural commodities traded domestically and internationally. While Perdue is the front-runner, the decision isn't final, the person said.
Trump rode to his election victory partly on strong support from voters in rural areas clamoring for an economic turnaround. Farm incomes are expected to fall for a third successive year while debt levels have climbed.
Trump and his aides have interviewed several others for the position, including former Texas A&M University President Elsa Murano, former Texas U.S. Representative Henry Bonilla, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs, former California Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, Idaho Governor Butch Otter, and North Dakota U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat.
Politico reported earlier that Perdue is the front-runner.
The U.S. is a major exporter of crops and other farm commodities, and that flow of goods may be disrupted if Trump follows through with a pledge to reshape trading relationships with China and other countries. Such changes might also affect global commodity prices.
Later Monday, a transition official said Trump is expected to nominate lawyer Robert Lighthizer as U.S. trade representative.
Lighthizer served as deputy U.S. trade representative under President Ronald Reagan. His responsibilities included industry, agriculture, investment and trade policy, according to his law firm biography.
Trump made trade a central issue in his campaign, vowing to pull out of a major Pacific Rim trade pact. He has said he prefers unilateral trade deals that he says would lead to more favorable conditions for U.S. businesses and workers.
The transition official was not authorized to publicly confirm Trump's expected decision and insisted on anonymity.
Information for this article was contributed by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger of The New York Times; Marvin G. Perez, Jennifer Jacobs and Alan Levin of Bloomberg News; and by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/03/2017