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.

The Geek Is Getting Rankled!

Previous posts show that the Geek is no cheerleader for the mullahocracy in Tehran. They have also demonstrated that the Geek is no war lover even though he accepts that war has its place in the spectrum of foreign policy.

Most of all, the sum of the Geek's posts underscore his utter contempt for policy decisions that are rooted (if that word is relevant in this context) in the gonads and viscera. Policies decisions that ignore historical trajectories. Policy choices that emerge from a vile combination of hopes or fears and domestic political calculations.

This brings the Geek to Iran. More particularly it brings the Geek to the subject of the Republicans vs the Mullahs.

At the often ignored center of the current confrontation between the Commander Guy on the one side and the Orator-in-Chief on the other is the International Atomic Energy Agency and its present director, Mohammed ElBaradei. The IAEA is charged with the responsibility of assuring member nations abide by the provisions of the treaties governing the peaceful use of atomic energy and nuclear weapon non-proliferation.

Get a grip on this.

The IAEA exists because the United States called it into existence.

"What!" You say.

That's right. Fifty years ago this year, President Dwight Eisenhower, in what many both at the time and later considered his finest speech, called upon the United Nations to create an agency dedicated to bringing atomic energy's potentials for benefit to all the nations of the world. He pledged not only complete American cooperation but even the provision of nuclear knowledge, technology, and materials for use under the agency's supervision.

Ike needed to use massive political arm twisting here at home to force changes in the extremely restrictive American laws governing nuclear matters. He did it. The laws were changed. The IAEA came into existence.

When asked about the IAEA years later, Ike reportedly looked out the window of his Gettysburg home, mused for a moment and answered with his famous smile, "It's working better than I hoped."

Taken as a whole, the IAEA has worked remarkably well over its fifty year life so far. It seems to be working rather well even with the obvious Iranian intransigence right now. Arguably, it would work even better if the current administration let it do its job.

It is reported that Mohammed ElBaradei sees no evidence of the Iranians being anywhere near the possession of an atomic bomb. In a companion remark, the IAEA head shows an appropriate degree of skepticism, "We have information that there has been maybe some studies about possible weaponization. That's why we have said that we cannot give Iran a pass right now, because there is still a lot of question marks." (Quote from The International Herald Tribune on-line http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/28/america/NA-GEN-US-Iran.php.)

The skeptical view is well taken. Iran has been playing games from hell over their self-proclaimed peaceful project to produce electricity. Given their record of obfuscation, tergiversation, and flat out lying, anything less would be foolhardy. (Now comes the big, BUT.)

Skepticism is not what the current administration has been exhibiting in recent months and weeks. Instead, the current administration has been acting as if it had proof-positive that the Iranians were not only seeking to obtain nuclear weapons but were on the very verge of doing so.

Unless one wishes to posit that the chest-thumping, crotch-pulling stridency coming from the mouths of the Commander Guy, the Veep, and assorted presidential wannabes is simply a successful attempt to boost oil company profits by driving the spot-market price of crude to record highs, the only explanation for their behavior is cognitive deficiency.

Kind of a "don't bother me with wimpy little facts, I wanna kick some ass" attitude. This sort of orientation might make both the utterer of threats and many of the audience feel good, but it is not the sort of approach that has shown positive results historically.

Get a grip on this--

Outside pressure consolidates the cohesion and political will of the target government and its citizens, (Think about how you make a snowball.)

Yeah, bucko, that's right. Pick up a handful of loose snow. Press it. Press it long enough and hard enough, the flakes become a solid mass. Press on it long enough and hard enough and what happens?

That's right. The snowball becomes an ice ball.

Repeat after the Geek, "Pressure consolidates long before it fractures."

Did that? Good. Now you have a major, basic fact of foreign policy which has totally eluded the current administration.

Our ill-considered approach has had the following negative effects. It has liberated the mullahocracy from much of the domestic unrest which would have been making its life miserable given the current economic condition of Iran and the demographics of the Iranian population. It has given the mullahocracy reason to be even more intransigent than would otherwise have been the case. It has forced the mullahocracy to invest the totality of national prestige and regime legitimacy in the nuclear issue and closely related matters.

Now, get a grip on this.

Our approach to the Iranians has helped two countries hostile to the US: the Peoples' Republic of China and Russia. Apparently the current administration hasn't gotten the word. Anything that diverts the US into unproductive, expensive, and influence draining side tracks hurts the US and helps these two adversaries.

Make no mistake about it. Regardless of the hopes of some Americans such as the "gobalism-will-solve-all" crowd, Walmart, and other business interests, China shares few, if any, national interests with the United States. Again, regardless of the hopes (or fears) of some Americans, Russia has not shed its fundamentally authoritarian inclination nor its historic feeling of inferiority compared to the West. Russians have been asking that most troublesome of all questions, the question which produced European Fascism, the question which underlies Islamism.

The Question?

"We were once great; now we are so small. Why?"

The policies of the current administration have encouraged the Russians to ask the Question. The policies of the current administration regarding Iran are encouraging both Moscow and Beijing to take actions which are best described as a form of diplomatic proxy war.

The new sanctions announced by the current administration are a justified gambit, particularly if the Europeans (perhaps convinced by a re-awakened "Crazy American Hypothesis") prove willing to join them despite economic losses to European businesses.

If so, then the emotional diatribes and not-so-veiled threats coming from the current administration can be rationalised, if not fully justified. Yet, the time for red meat rhetoric has passed. The time has come for some silence from the White House (and the campaign trail.)

If the Republicans (or at least the neocon ninnie component of that party) cannot remember Dwight Eisenhower who both created the IAEA and warned against the creation of a garrison state in pursing the chimera of complete security, they sure ought to remember Theodore Roosevelt. That was the hairy chested president who counseled speaking softly while holding a big stick.

The Geek is no admirer of Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich), the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He's got to give the senator his due. Levin is right when he said it was time to stop the "hot rhetoric."

ElBaradei was even more on target. "My fear is that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we will end up into a precipice, we will end up into an abyss. As I said, the Middle East is in a total mess, to say the least. And we cannot add fuel to the fire."

Bang on!, Mr ElBaradei.

There's always time enough for war. We can wait--at least for awhile.