nuclear proliferation

Iran Deal Reached

Flags aligned for photo at the U.N. in Vienna on July 14. Photo by European External Action Service / Flickr.com

Later this week, President Obama will deliver a major speech promoting the Iran nuclear agreement at American University. I’m looking forward to the speech, both as an AU alum and someone closely following the upcoming Senate vote on the nuclear agreement. We know President Obama will make the strategic and scientific cases for the deal; I hope he makes the moral case as well.

President Obama has twice chosen the university in northwest D.C. to deliver major speeches, but it was also the site of President Kennedy’s landmark speech on peace and nuclear disarmament in 1963, where he declared, “While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests” and “the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both.”

4-20-2015
A sweeping coalition of Catholic leaders is calling on lawmakers to embrace Obama’s proposed deal with Iran to scale back the country’s nuclear program, insisting the plan is a good one and asking Congress to back off attempts to kill the agreement.
4-20-2015
Over 50 Christian leaders voiced their support for the recently agreed framework of a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and the Group 5+1.
4-14-2015
Four dozen Christian leaders voiced support for a framework agreement for a peaceful path to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons in a full-page ad in Roll Call paid for by Sojourners, a Washington-based social justice ministry founded and led by author and public theologian Jim Wallis.
Photo via Tyler Orsburn / Catholic News Service / RNS

Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, N.M. Photo via Tyler Orsburn / Catholic News Service / RNS

The U.S. Catholic bishops have welcomed the Obama administration’s tentative agreement aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and their top spokesman on international affairs bluntly warned Congress against doing anything to undermine it.

The bishops “oppose efforts that seek to undermine the negotiation process or make a responsible multi-party agreement more difficult to achieve and implement,” Bishop Oscar Cantu, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace Committee, wrote to House and Senate lawmakers on April 13.

“The alternative to an agreement leads toward armed conflict, an outcome of profound concern to the Church,” said Cantu, who heads the Diocese of Las Cruces, N.M.

The warning — and accompanying support in a letter of commendation that Cantu sent last week to Secretary of State John Kerry — follow a thumbs-up from Pope Francis to the proposed accord, and coincides with an endorsement on April 13 by a group of largely liberal mainline Protestant leaders.

Diplomats from the U.S. and six world powers meeting in Switzerland earlier this month unveiled the framework of what could be an historic accord to inspect Iran’s growing nuclear program and prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

[Editor's Note: In anticipation of the anniversary of the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, God's Politics will feature a series of posts on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.

David Cortright 5-18-2010
The nuclear fuel swap deal signed between Iran and Turkey and Brazil is a positive development that deserves U.S. support.
Eugene Cho 10-19-2009

Like many folks a couple weeks ago, I was stunned that Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, I thought it was some sort of joke but alas, it was legit. But I did manage to get couple tweets in there including this one:

Just peace theory proceeds from the premise that peace is a day by day effort. It is a process that requires vision, skill, and courage.
John Gehring 7-31-2009
When the United States and the Soviet Union stared into the abyss of nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick began reading obscure journals like the Bulletin of the At
Anyone watching the news over the past couple of months will have noticed a flurry of action from two of the nations in former President Bush's infamous "Axis of Evil." North Korea tested a long-ra