Nobel Laureates Call on UN to Act in Iran Protests

By Jubin Katiraie

A group of 14 Nobel laureates has written a joint letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in which they drew attention to the Iranian authorities crackdown on the ongoing Iran protests, and call for the UN to immediately intervene to prevent the mullahs from conducting further atrocities against the Iranian people.

They called for UN member states to meet “as soon as possible” and to dispatch a “multinational fact-finding commission” to investigate the crisis and hold those responsible to account. 

The Nobel laureates wrote: “[We] seek to express our grave concerns over the recent deadly crackdown on anti-regime demonstrators in Iran and condemn the security forces’ use of lethal force against innocent people demanding their rights to be respected… In addition to our scientific obligations to advance science and improve human life we strongly believe that defending human rights across the globe is our duty.”

The protests, which began over a sharp increase in fuel prices on November 15, quickly grew into a nationwide uprising, where people who were fed up with 40 years of “repression, incompetence, mismanagement, and corruption” called for regime change in at least 187 cities.

The government subsequent crackdown has left 600 dead, 4,000 injured, and over 10,000 arrested after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave the “green light” for security forces to crush demonstrations. The authorities also vowed to hang protest leaders, are torturing those arrested, and shut down the internet to prevent news of the crackdown from leaking.

The Nobel laureates wrote: “All of us who care must offer our full support and solidarity to the brave people of Iran. They deserve nothing less. “

The signatories included:

1. Professor Richard Roberts, Nobel Prize, Medicine 1993, USA 
2. Professor Elias Corey, Nobel Prize, Chemistry 1990, USA 
3. Professor Gerhard Ertl, Nobel Prize, Chemistry 2007, Germany 
4. Professor John Lewis Hall, Nobel Prize, Physics 2005, USA 
5. Professor Oliver Hart, Nobel Prize, Economics 2016, USA 
6. Professor Tim Hunt, Nobel Laureate, Medicine 2001, UK 
7. Professor Jerome Friedman, Nobel Prize, Physics 1986, USA 
8. Professor Roger Guillemin, Nobel Prize, Medicine 1977, USA 
9. Professor Roger D. Kornberg, Nobel Prize, Chemistry 2006, USA 
10. Professor John Polanyi, Nobel Prize, Chemistry 1986, Canada 
11. Professor John Mather, Nobel Prize, Physics 2006, USA 
12. Professor Dudley Herschbach, Nobel Prize, Chemistry 1986, USA 
13. Professor Hamilton Smith, Nobel Prize, Medicine 1978, USA 
14. Professor Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Prize, Physics, 1979, USA