ElBaradei Wins

Despite intense effort by John Bolton and the neocrazies to get rid of him, Mohamed ElBaradei has just been elected to a third term as Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A principal function of the IAEA – established in 1957 – is

"To establish and administer safeguards designed to ensure that special fissionable and other materials, services, equipment, facilities, and information made available by the Agency or at its request or under its supervision or control are not used in such a way as to further any military purpose; and to apply safeguards, at the request of the parties, to any bilateral or multilateral arrangement, or at the request of a State, to any of that State's activities in the field of atomic energy..."

When the IAEA's inspectors detect possible or actual noncompliance with a Safeguards Agreement the director general reports that to the Board. The Board can then decide – by a two-thirds majority – whether or not the "non-compliance" furthers "any military purpose" and should be reported to the UN Security Council for possible action.

The Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1970 took advantage of the existing IAEA verification and reporting mechanism, requiring each no-nuke signatory to enter into a bilateral "safeguards" agreement with the IAEA "with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons."

It is important to note that the NPT – in and of itself – contains no enforcement mechanism, whatsoever.

So, why did the neocrazies want to get rid of ElBaradei.

Well, back in 1998 ElBaradei told the Security Council that

• There were no indications to suggest that Iraq was successful in its attempt to produce nuclear weapons.
• There were no indications to suggest that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapons-grade nuclear material through its indigenous processes.
• There were no indications that Iraq otherwise clandestinely acquired weapons-usable material.
• There were no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance.

[Rats!]

Four years later, on the eve of Bush’s invasion of Iraq to prevent Saddam from nuking us, ElBaradei was able to assure the Security Council that there was no evidence that Iraq had even attempted to reconstruct its nuclear programs, even for peaceful purposes.

[Rats!]

Then the French, British, German and Iranian foreign ministers met in Tehran back in October of 2003, emerging to announce that the Iranian government had been persuaded to sign an Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement and – as a "confirmation of its good intentions" – had volunteered to begin complying with it, pending ratification.

Furthermore, even though Iran had the "inalienable right" – as a NPT signatory – to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, Iran announced that – as a further "confidence building measure" – it would temporarily suspend all uranium enrichment and processing activities already planned or under way.

The IAEA was officially notified of this voluntary suspension and invited to verify and monitor it.

The IAEA Board of Governors was officially notified that the voluntary suspension by Iran was not a legal obligation and would be sustained only so long as the EU-Iranian talks continued.

But, President Bush – who wasn't even a party to the "talks" – said that if Iran resumed the activities it had voluntarily suspended, he would take the matter to the Security Council for possible action.

But here is what ElBaradei had to say last week, following his re-election:

"On the positive side, again I have made it clear that Iran has facilitated access to nuclear material and facilities under the Additional Protocol and the Safeguards agreement.

"They have also maintained in full the suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing activities, which is again positive."

[Nothing but Rats!]

"As you know the EU is supposed to provide comprehensive proposals to Iran by the end of July, beginning of August. I think that's an important, delicate phase of that negotiation. I very much hope that that dialogue will continue.

"I was very pleased to see the US today saying that they are also lending their full support to the European dialogue. So, I very much hope that the diplomatic solution to the Iran issue will continue and will yield full results."

What did ElBaradei mean by that last remark? Could he be referring to the manner in which Bush cut short his "support" for the "diplomatic" solution to the Iraqi "issue," which Bush had sought and the Security Council had provided in Resolution 1441?