[JURIST] A group of prominent physicists has urged President Bush not to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran [JURIST news archive] in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [PDF text], after recent articles in the Washington Post [April 18 report] and the New Yorker [April 10 report] reported the administration's willingness to consider nuclear strikes. The Bush administration has denied the reports [JURIST report].

The protest came in the form of a letter [PDF text] from thirteen of the nation's leading physicists, including five Nobel Laureates. According to the authors:

Using or even merely threatening to use a nuclear weapon preemptively against a nonnuclear adversary tells the 182 non-nuclear-weapon countries signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that their adherence to the treaty offers them no protection against a nuclear attack by a nuclear nation. Many are thus likely to abandon the treaty, and the nuclear non-proliferation framework will be damaged even further than it already has, with disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world.