MIT, a whiteboard and nuclear physics: how the Iran deal was struck

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How two MIT-educated scientists on opposing sides - and a Harvard-educated US president - saved the historic nuclear agreement between the West and Iran

In the White House, as the Iran nuclear deal was on, then off, then on again, a Harvard-educated lawyer poured over the technical niceties of heavy water reactors and uranium-enriching centrifuges with forensic attention, convinced the devil lay in the details.

It was a tough brief to master. The proposals transmitted for perusal – often orally, deliberately not committed to paper – were being prepared by two nuclear physicists who had spent their formative years together at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the renowned centre of scientific learning just down the road from Harvard.

There was, however, one advantage to this method of work, which put academic analysis before geopolitical manoeuvring. The men parsing the scientific details did not then have to summarise them in layman’s language for the politicians who were negotiating the deal: they were themselves the politicians negotiating the deal.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/11516061/MIT-a-whiteboard-and-nuclear-physics-how-the-Iran-deal-was-struck.html