I’m writing to urge support for the Iran nuclear weapons/sanctions relief deal. Word limits make it impossible to address, one-by-one, the various fear-mongering objections currently being raised to this agreement.

If not impossible, they’re certainly very difficult to take seriously, as they spring from the fact-free notion that our current American administration is some combination of inept, naïve and subversively dedicated to undermining our security.

Real naivete is actually manifest in opponents, who at least pretend not to know that a return to a status quo of sanctions against the regime is no longer an available option. Our negotiating partners — the rather prominent, important countriesof United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China — were not willing to continue them, leaving United States as sole sanctioner.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who “would be ready on Day 1 to bomb Iran” and is naïve enough to think that would lead to an easy victory, at least, for once, “got real” about alternatives.

Maybe the real problem is the choice the United States and Israel have made in aligning with hereditary tyrannies such as Saudi Arabia. In the dismal blood feud between Sunni and Shia, we should be scrupulously neutral, not taking the Saudi/Sunni side, and we can move in that direction if interference doesn’t overwhelm us.

Perhaps, as Mainers, we can prevail upon the generally reasonable Republican Sen. Susan Collins. Her vote in favor would almost certainly clinch the adoption of this agreement. Let’s all call her office today, and every day if we can stand the waits-on-hold.

War and peace are life and death.

James Silin

Whitefield