Szilard was frustrated by the Kennedy administration’s policies, and moved to a hotel near the White House to lobby for arms control. In 1962, he founded the Council for a Livable World, the first political action committee for arms control and disarmament.

“The folly of imposing new sanctions now is fraught with irony. Years of steadily tightened multilateral sanctions have succeeded. They’ve brought the new, relatively moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to an accord that halts Iranian enrichment of weapons-grade uranium,” writes Council Board Member, Gerald Warburg for The Virginia Pilot.