POLITICS

Former U.S. Diplomats Praise Iran Deal

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS

Document: American Ambassadors' Letter 

More than 100 former American ambassadors wrote to President Obama on Thursday praising the nuclear deal reached with Iran this week as a “landmark agreement” that could be effective in halting Tehran’s development of a nuclear weapon, and urging Congress to support it.
“If properly implemented, this comprehensive and rigorously negotiated agreement can be an effective instrument in arresting Iran’s nuclear program and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in the volatile and vitally important region of the Middle East,” said the letter, whose signers include diplomats named by presidents of both political parties.
They wrote that they recognized the deal “is not a perfect or risk-free settlement of this problem.”
“However,” they added, “we believe that without it, the risks to the security of the United States and our friends and allies would be far greater.”
The accord, they continued, “deserves congressional support and the opportunity to show it can work.”
Signers of the letter, spearheaded by the Iran Project, a New York-based organization that is dedicated to “a peaceful resolution to the nuclear standoff,” include prominent retired diplomats appointed by Mr. Obama and his Republican and Democratic predecessors.
Richard Boucher, who served as the spokesman for secretaries of state of both parties and the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, signed the letter, as did Ryan Crocker, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon first named by President George Bush and later by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Mr. Obama.
R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state who led the Iran diplomatic effort for the younger Mr. Bush, is a signer, as is Teresita C. Schaffer, a former ambassador to Sri Lanka first named by the elder Mr. Bush who also served under Mr. Clinton.
Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel and Egypt who served under Mr. Clinton and the younger Mr. Bush, also signed the letter, as did four other onetime American ambassadors to Israel: James B. Cunningham, William C. Harrop, Thomas R. Pickering and Edward S. Walker Jr.