Golly! Gee! You Mean We Can't Trust The IAEA?

For a long, long time (say about the past six years) there has been more than a few sneaking suspicions that the outgoing director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been shading the truth about what was going on in Iran. It has been easy to poo-poo these suspicions as being mere prejudice based on Dr Mohammad ElBaradi's religious affiliation and ethnic background.

It would be tempting to dismiss the latest allegations of ElBaradi having massaged and manipulated the publicly released quarterly reports on Iran's "compliance" with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as they emanate from Israel. While it is quite true that Israel is anything but a disinterested party in the ongoing Iranian nuclear contretemps, this does not mean the odor of hanky-panky in the reports department is an artifact, a creation of Israeli propagandists.

At the present, Israel has less rather than more reason to escalate its differences with the soon-to-leave ElBaradi or the IAEA. The reason for this assessment rests in the recent demand by the Arab League that the UN entity force Israel under its purview. To this end the Arab League has requested the backing of the European Union. Many, if not all, the member countries of the EU have been tilting more and more against Israel in recent years, so the possibility of the Arab demarche receiving European support is far from remote.

In the past Israel has been quiet and careful in its criticism of ElBaradi. This caution would be expected to be extended given the Arab League move and the necessity of allowing the incoming IAEA Director-General, the Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, a chance to get up and running. It would have been far more in keeping with past precedent if the Israelis (or the Americans) discretely hinted that the new broom ought to sweep the doubts of the past aside by putting the full reports including the classified annexes on the public record.

Unless the Israelis (and the US among others) are already convinced that for some set of unknown reasons Yukiya Amano has already committed himself to keeping the lid on the past, there is no reason to raise the issue of ElBaradi's candor and forthrightness now--other than to make certain that the full facts are on the open table prior to the late September deadline for an Iranian gesture of compliance. If the suspicions and allegations of ElBaradi having shaded the public truth are demonstrated to have been correct, the result may well be a shift in public opinion in both Western Europe and the US to favor more robust actions to insure Iran does not get the bomb.

It has long been an open secret that the US and the UK among others have not trusted the ElBaradi regime. The legacy of distrust goes back to the days just before the American invasion of Iraq. At that time the Bush/Cheney administration frankly and flatly tossed aside the conclusions of the IAEA and other inspection groups regarding the Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Dr ElBaradi was hacked off by this cavalier dismissal--with good reason as events later showed. It is for this reason that he may have chosen to soften the edges of harsh truth regarding Iran. The process by which the Director-General prepares the reports provides ample opportunity for distorting the findings of the inspection teams under the Safeguards Office.

Another possibility for Israel having gone public right now is the utterly preposterous demand by Iran that the IAEA take up its proposal to ban all attacks by anyone, anywhere, at any time on nuclear facilities. With a presumably straight face the Iranians risibly maintain this demand is not prompted by any fear of an Israeli attack on their nuke plants.

Oh, no, not at all. Fer sure, dudes. The Iranians have been present all along during the decade or so during which the IAEA has debated proposals banning attacks on nuclear facilities which might liberate radioactivity into the atmosphere. All these proposals have been blocked, not by the US seeking to maintain its so-called "nuclear hegemony," but by all the nuclear powers. The various rationales have been confusing, incoherent, and often contradictory but all reflect the basic reality that no nuclear power is willing to limit its targeting options such as to preclude the pre-emptive neutralisation of unlaunched nuclear weapons.

The re-awakening of doubts regarding the candor and capacity of the IAEA under the twelve years of Dr ElBaradi's stewardship is a good way of refocusing attention on Iran and the danger it may soon present not simply to Israel or even the region but the world. It is also a fine way to focus the attention of the incoming Director-General in case he harbors any intention of replicating the ElBaradi mode of operation.

Whatever Dr ElBaradi's intentions and motives may have been (and the Geek is not psychologist enough to speculate on the many potentials), the consequences of having shaded, or, at the least, being seen as having shaded the truth on Iran, has been counterproductive. The ability of the IAEA to function, as was noted by the man behind its creation, President Dwight Eisenhower, is its inherent credibility. Should ElBaradi be shown to have sacrificed credibility, to have rendered ambiguous that which should have been clear, stark, he will have thrown away the credibility of the organisation.

Without total, unquestioned, and unquestionable credibility, the IAEA loses its potential to slow the race to nuclear weapons, which is well underway from Tehran to Pyongyang to Rangoon. Without credibility of the highest, most unimpeachable sort, the vision of a nuclear free world articulated most recently by President Obama fades further in the fog of self-perceived, self-defined national interest.

The very fact that doubts and questions regarding the completeness, the accuracy, the truth of the ElBaradi authorised public reports on Iran demands that the US move with dispatch and effectiveness to assure the rapid, full release of all reports including the initially classified annexes from the Safeguards Office. If it turns out that the ElBaradi regime did play fast and loose with the truth, at least that can be shown to be a fact of the past.

The US was a strong backer of the incoming Director-General. The US must exert all necessary persuasion on the new man to make utterly sure that no future massaging, manipulation, or bending of hard truths occurs. Without these actions, there is no way that the world will see less rather than more mushroom clouds in the future.