AP reported some emollient comments yesterday by Mohamed ElBaradei:
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Sunday he had no evidence Iran was working actively to build nuclear weapons and expressed concern that escalating rhetoric from the U.S. could bring disaster."We have information that there has been maybe some studies about possible weaponization,'' said Mohamed ElBaradei, who leads the International Atomic Energy Agency. "That's why we have said that we cannot give Iran a pass right now, because there is still a lot of question marks.''
"But have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No.''
As so often on this subject, where hard information is scarce and prudent assumptions have to be made, these are answers to the wrong questions. The emerging problem with Iran is not whether it is actively building nuclear weapons but whether we can take the regime at its word that a civil nuclear programme will not be used for military purposes. The answer to that question dominates all other considerations, because if and when Iran has access to the full fuel cycle, then the technology to fabricate material for nuclear weapons is essentially all there. Because the regime is deceitful, supports terrorism and anticipates the extinction of a member state of the UN, that prospect is ominous. This is why united diplomatic pressure on Iran needs to be exercised now, before only military options remain. ElBaradei will make that task more difficult if he insists on interpreting his role as that of political leader rather than civil servant.
Note too that this analysis is based on the cautious assumption that ElBaradei's technical assessment is right. One important party does not share that assessment. Bloomberg reports today:
French Defense Minister Herve Morin contradicted the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency and said his government has evidence Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon, Agence France-Presse reported.The UN agency has said there was no evidence Iran was developing an atomic bomb, AFP said.
Who is the more reliable source? The Nobel peace laureate or the hawkish right-wing French government? On a balance of probability, the answer is obvious. It has to be the French government. Think back 15 years, and consider this report from the New York Times, 20 January 1992:
International Atomic Energy Agency officials say the latest inspection mission to Iraq filled in major gaps in the agency's understanding of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program.At a news conference Friday, the head of the agency's inspection team, Maurizio Zifferero, said the Iraqis had accounted for all the components and raw materials that the German Government said had been sold to Iraq by German companies and had subsequently been used in the program.
Iraq was using the supplies to build gas centrifuges, equipment that is employed to enrich uranium to make it usable as fuel in atomic bombs.
"Everything the Germans told us about has been seen in destroyed form," David Kyd, an agency spokesman, said after the news conference. "We now have to make an analysis and to work back from that to see whether the amounts tally."
The German Government's tip to the agency that German companies supplied raw materials and components to Iraq enabled investigators to identify parts of the centrifuge program, Mr. Zifferero said.
The IAEA under Hans Blix had failed comprehensively to grasp how far advanced had been Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons programme. At the start of the Gulf War, Iraq had been two or three years away from producing enriched uranium. The IAEA belatedly found out after the reversal of Iraq's annexation of Kuwait, when the German government provided missing information about Saddam's centrifuge programme. We know that Iran acquired centrifuge designs in the mid-1990s, having bought them from the rogue Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, who in turn had stolen them from a European consortium.
I'm just saying.
