ElBaradei carrying Islamic Republic’s water

Sometimes its enough to make a reader go cross-eyed trying to follow ElBaradei’s International Atomic Energy Agency and their seemingly useless reports on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Like report issued Friday (UPI link);

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei is calling for more documents from Iran to assure its nuclear activities are peaceful.

In a report on nuclear safeguards in Iran released only to the IAEA board of governors, ElBaradei called on Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment-related activities and provide additional documents to prove enrichment activities are for peaceful objectives, IAEA reported.

“As a result of Iran running an undeclared nuclear program for almost two decades, there has been confidence deficit on the part of the international community about the intentions (and) future intentions of Iran’s nuclear program,” ElBaradei said in a statement.

“Therefore the (U.N.) Security Council asked Iran to suspend its enrichment-related activities. I hope that Iran will continue to work closely with the Security Council, to create the conditions for Iran and the international community to engage in comprehensive negotiation that would lead to a durable solution.”

So Iran reads this report and then trumpets that they have succeeded in pulling the wool over the world’s eyes once again (IRNA link);

 The 11-page report said that the agency has “made good progress in clarifying the outstanding issues that had to do with Iran’s past nuclear activities.

“We have managed to clarify all the remaining outstanding issues, which is the scope and nature of Iran’s enrichment program,” ElBaradei added.

He stressed in the report that in connection with the alleged weaponization studies, the agency has “not seen any indication that these studies were linked to nuclear material.”

Citing ElBaradei’s report, Aqazadeh said the file will no longer remain at the IAEA’s agenda and the agency would monitor Iran as routine work.

But, this morning’s Wall Street Journal tells a different story about Nobel Laureate ElBaradei and his mechanizations as head of that agency;

 The report represents Mr. ElBaradei’s best effort to whitewash Tehran’s record. Earlier this month, on Iranian television, he made clear his purpose, announcing that he expected “the issue would be solved this year.” And if doing so required that he do battle against the IAEA’s technical experts, reverse previous conclusions about suspect programs, and allow designees of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an unprecedented role in crafting a “work plan” that would allow the regime to receive a cleaner bill of health from the IAEA — so be it.

Mr. ElBaradei’s report culminates a career of freelancing and fecklessness which has crippled the reputation of the organization he directs. He has used his Nobel Prize to cultivate an image of a technocratic lawyer interested in peace and justice and above politics. In reality, he is a deeply political figure, animated by antipathy for the West and for Israel on what has increasingly become a single-minded crusade to rescue favored regimes from charges of proliferation.

Mr. ElBaradei assumed the directorship on Dec. 1, 1997. On his watch, but undetected by his agency, Iran constructed its covert enrichment facilities and, according to the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, engaged in covert nuclear-weapons design. India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear godfather, exported nuclear technology around the world.

In 2003, Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi confessed to an undetected weapons effort. Mr. ElBaradei’s response? He rebuked the U.S. and U.K. for bypassing him. When Israel recently destroyed what many believe was a secret (also undetected) nuclear facility in Syria, Mr. ElBaradei told the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh that it is “unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility,” although his agency has not physically investigated the site.

The IAEA’s mission is to verify that “States comply with their commitments, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other non-proliferation agreements, to use nuclear material and facilities only for peaceful purposes.” Yet in 2004 Mr. ElBaradei wrote in the New York Times that, “We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction, yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security.”

So, ElBaradei sees a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic as a counter balance to a nuclear-armed Israel in the region. Will the Nobel Committee revoke his prize when the missiles rain down on Tel Aviv?

Category: Foreign Policy, Terror War