As we remember those who were obliterated in our bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago in August 1945, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, should lead a global effort to pursue a nuclear weapons-free world, as he promised to do in his speech in Prague on April 5, 2009. In an age of cyber war and terrorism, nuclear weapons, once perceived as a source of security, have become our greatest liability. Our nuclear weapons have done nothing to deter Russian action in Ukraine, or defeat ISIS or al Qaeda, or accomplish any other national security priority. The time is ripe to ban and eliminate all nuclear weapons, globally.

The agreement with Iran demonstrates that diplomacy can make the world safer by limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. The terms of the deal, negotiated over a 20- month period by diplomats from Iran and six other States, should assure the international community that Iran will continue to abide by its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. There are no nuclear weapons in Iran today, and compliance with the agreement will make it far less likely that Iran can acquire nuclear weapons in the future. What is good for Iran — and for the other 185 nuclear-weapon-free NPT member states — is good for the nine nuclear-armed states (the United States, Russia, China, the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and for the world as a whole.

More than 112 countries without nuclear weapons have signed onto the Humanitarian Pledge launched by Austria to support an international, legal ban of nuclear weapons as a way to apply pressure to the nine nuclear weapons states to eliminate these weapons.

As President President Ronald Reagan said in his 1984 State of the Union Address: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the Earth.”

Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King should support the diplomatic agreement with Iran and pressure the Obama administration to live up to its 2009 pledge to seek a world free of nuclear weapons. The future of humanity is at stake, and when it comes to nuclear war, prevention is the only cure.

Andrew A. Cadot

Roque Bluffs, ME