Negotiations between Iran and the P5-1 then continued. A framework agreement was reached in Lausanne in April 2015. Intense marathon negotiations then continued, with the last meeting lasting 17 days in Vienna at the Coburg Palace. [57] Negotiations appeared to break up in several places, but negotiators reached an agreement. [57] When negotiators approached an agreement, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry asked Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to confirm directly that he was “entitled to reach an agreement, not only by the [Iranian] president, but also by the supreme leader?” [57] Zarif assured that he was. [57] On August 8, 2015, 29 eminent American scientists, mostly physicists, published an open letter in which they committed to the agreement. [231] The letter to Obama states, “We congratulate you and your team on the negotiations for a technically sound, rigorous and innovative agreement that will provide the necessary security over the next decade and will not develop nuclear weapons more than Iran, and will serve as the basis for other initiatives to strengthen barriers to nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and around the world.” [232] The letter also states that the agreement “can advance the cause of peace and security in the Middle East and serve as a guide for future non-proliferation agreements.” [231] [232] Among the 29 signatories were “some of the world`s most competent experts in the field of nuclear weapons and arms control,” many of whom had Q clearances and were long-time advisers to Congress, the White House and federal authorities. [231] The five lead authors were Richard L. Garwin (a nuclear physicist who played a key role in the development of the first hydrogen bomb and whom the New York Times described as “among the last living physicists who rang the nuclear age”; Robert J. Goldston (Director of the Princeton Science and Global Security Program and former Director of Princeton`s Plasma Physics Laboratory); R. Scott Kemp (with a professor of nuclear science and technology and former scientific advisor for non-proliferation and arms control at the State Department); Rush D.
Holt (physicist and former representative of the United States, now president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science); And Frank N. of Hippel (Princeton professor of public policy and former deputy director of national security at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy). Six Nobel Laureates in Physics signed the letter with: Philip W. Anderson of Princeton University; Leon N. Cooper of Brown University; Sheldon L. Glashow of Boston University; David Gross of the University of California, Santa Barbara; Burton Richter of Stanford University; And Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [231] Other scientists who have signed up include Siegfried S. Hecker (a Stanford physicist and former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory), Freeman Dyson (of Princeton) and Sidney Drell (of Stanford).
[231] Originally, the House of Representatives could be expected to vote on a formal rejection resolution tabled by Republican Congressman Ed Royce of California, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. [331] [j] When the Senate moved to a vote on a resolution of disapproval, the leaders of the House of Representatives (under Republican control) planned to vote on a similar resolution of disapproval. [334] But conservative Republicans “revolted in protest” because “the right flank of the House wanted tougher action from their leader” and the Republican leaders of the House of Representatives (under President John Boehner) instead put on the ground an approval resolution “to effectively force The Democrats who had expressed support for the President to officially register such support.” [334] Not surprisingly, on September 11, 2015, the resolution failed because of a vote of 162 to 269; 244 Republicans and 25 Democrats voted “no,” 162 Democrats and no Republicans voted yes. [334] [335] On the same day, House Republicans conducted two