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Jewish World Review June 6, 2008 / 3 Sivan, 5768 UN choosing to protect rogue nuclear programs By Caroline B. Glick
As far as elBaradei is concerned, diplomacy means never having to say you're
sorry and always attacking people who actually care what you think. And so
it is not surprising that ever since Israel destroyed the installation in
al-Kibar, elBaradei has reserved his sharpest attacks not for Syria, which
was exposed as an illicit nuclear proliferator, but for Israel and the US.
Unlike Israel, Syria is a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
At this week's meeting of the IAEA's Board of Governors, elBaradei discussed
how — in breach of its treaty obligations — Syria has refused IAEA
requests to inspect the bombed out site and three other suspected nuclear
sites in the country.
The IAEA has been asking for permission to inspect al-Kibar since last
September. And since September Syria has ignored the requests. Satellite
photography has shown that Syria has used the intervening months to build a
new structure over the destroyed reactor to hide it. Apparently Damascus is
now comfortable with the situation on the ground because it has apparently
agreed to allow UN inspectors to visit the site later in the month.
Damascus's belated response to IAEA requests is anything but a sign that
Syria is ready to come clean on its nuclear programs. While allowing
inspectors at the altered al-Kibar site, Syria has refused IAEA requests to
inspect three other military installations where it is suspected of
developing nuclear weapons. Nuclear experts told news agencies this week
that two of those sites are operational. One is suspected of having
equipment that can reprocess nuclear material into the fissile core of
warheads.
But elBaradei doesn't really care. At the Board of Governors meeting this
week he sufficed with the laconic statement that Damascus, "has an
obligation to report the planning and construction of any nuclear facility
to the agency."
The countries that really got his goat are Israel and the US.
ElBaradei complained bitterly that the US waited until April to tell the
IAEA what Israel bombed last September. And, of course, he attacked Israel
for attacking the nuclear reactor in the first place.
In his words, "It is deeply regrettable that information concerning this
installation was not provided to the agency in a timely manner and that
force was resorted to unilaterally before the agency was given an
opportunity to establish the facts."
ElBaradei has headed the UN's nuclear watchdog agency for six years. His
stewardship of the IAEA landed him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. Given the
Nobel committee's open anti-Americanism and embrace of terrorists and their
state sponsors, the Nobel committee's support for elBaradei makes sense. For
under elBaradei's leadership, the IAEA has devoted itself to
performing two tasks.
It seeks to be informed of rogue regime's illicit nuclear weapons programs
before those programs are exposed in the media and cause the IAEA
embarrassment; and the IAEA works to ensure that nothing will be done to
thwart these rogue regimes' nuclear weapons programs.
If he had to choose between the first and second goal, elBaradei has been
clear that he will always choose to protect rogue nuclear programs - even if
they are hidden in plain view. As he explained to the BBC in May 2007, "I
have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that
we go crazy killing each other."
Hinting at his reason for obfuscating Iran's quest for the atom bomb he
added, "You do not want to give additional arguments to new crazies who say,
'Let's go and bomb Iran.'"
To prevent such "crazies" from acting, in August 2006 elBaradei launched an
attack against the US Congress. In an icy letter to then Rep. Peter
Hoekstra, then chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, elBaradei attacked the committee report on Iran's nuclear
program which accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons and accused the
IAEA of working to prevent conclusions from being drawn about the nature of
Iran's nuclear program.
It is in light of elBaradei's unrelenting work to protect Iran's nuclear
program and his campaign against Westerners who wish to take concerted
action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons that the IAEA's latest
report on Iran is so remarkable.
The IAEA's submitted its latest report to the UN Security Council and its
Board of Governors last Monday. A far cry from its anemic predecessors, the
latest report is a smoking gun.
The report sets out considerable evidence implicating Iran in an attempt to
develop nuclear weapons. It also admits that Iran has failed to explain
documented evidence of military aspects of its program.
Specifically, the IAEA report noted that Iran is building structures that
fit the description of a nuclear test site. Iran has done work designing a
missile re-entry vehicle. It has conducted studies toward building a uranium
conversion facility that would convert uranium yellowcake to UF4 or Green
Salt - a process vital for producing uranium metal for weapons cores. Iran
made advances toward adapting its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to detonate
some 650 meters above their targets - a capacity only relevant for nuclear
warheads. It has developed and tested exploding bridgewire detonators "that
could be applicable to an implosion-type nuclear device."
The IAEA report also warned that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards-owned
company Kimia Maadan has been actively involved in the nuclear program as
have several other firms run by the Iranian military. These firms include
the Physics Research Center, the Institute of Applied Physics, the
Educational Research Institute and the Defense Industries Organization.
The IAEA's report is devastating. Indeed, it seems to back up the Mossad's
warning that Iran could have an atomic arsenal by next year. At a minimum,
it moves the international conversation about Iran's nuclear program from
the question of whether Iran is building nuclear bombs to when Iran will
acquire nuclear bombs.
The question that naturally arises from the IAEA report is why did elBaradei
agree to publish it?
Given his openly stated objective of preventing anyone from attacking Iran's
nuclear installations, the only reasonable explanation for elBaradei's
behavior is that he is convinced that Iran's nuclear installations are safe.
That is, elBaradei is willing to point a finger at Iran because he is sure
that neither the US nor Israel will prevent Iran from getting the bomb.
To have reached this conclusion, elBaradei needed no further intelligence
than the morning papers. Reading them, he would have seen that the US
intelligence and foreign policy communities have decided to throw in the
towel on the war everywhere other than Iraq. The US capitulation, which
began with the Bush administration's decision to appease North Korea last
year went into full gear with last December's publication of the National
Intelligence Estimate on Iran which claimed that Iran had ended its nuclear
weapons program in 2003.
Then came the Bush Administration's embrace of Palestinian statehood as what
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice referred to as "a vital US interest" in
her address to AIPAC's policy conference this week.
After that, came the downfall of Pakistani dictator and guardian of
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal Pervez Musharraf. As the effective release of
Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove, A.Q. Khan from house arrest this week, and the
new "democratic" Pakistani government's surrender of North and South
Waziristan to the Taliban in recent weeks show, the US's support for
Musharraf on the one hand, and failure to support or develop anti-jihadist
forces in Pakistani society and the Pakistani military on the other has
brought about a situation where the US has no one to turn to in Pakistan
today. Rather than take action to secure Afghanistan from the Pakistan-based
Taliban or arrest Khan, the Bush Administration has sufficed with whining
and begging the new pro-jihad and anti-American "democratic" government to
accept more US military assistance.
On the theoretical front, the US has similarly capsized its war efforts. In
April the Homeland Security Department distributed a memo instructing US
officials not to use the terms "Islamic," "Islamist," "jihad" or "jihadist,"
to describe the US's enemy in the war. Moreover, the new guidance - which
the State Department reportedly adopted happily - also asserts that it is
wrong for the US to use the word "liberty" to describe what it hopes to
replace jihad with in Muslim societies. From now on, the war is to be
described as a campaign to bring "progress" to the Middle East. And the war
is no longer a war. Rather, it is the "Global Struggle for Security and
Progress."
But not everyone was satisfied with the new Orwellian terminology. Last week
the *Financial Times* reported that Charles Allen, the Department of
Homeland Security's Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis wrote a
memo arguing that the term "war on terror" should also be dropped. In his
view, the term creates "animus" towards the US in the Muslim world which
automatically (and unaccountably) associates terrorism with Islam.
And of course, in ordering US officials responsible for analyzing
intelligence and conducting US diplomacy to ignore the nature of the enemy
as well as the US's counter-ideology of liberty, the US is merely following
the example of the EU and Britain which abandoned any attempt to bring
rationality into their intelligence analyses long ago. Given that these are
the people who are responsible for assessing data on Iran's nuclear program,
elBaradei probably figured that he has nothing to worry about.
To all of this of course, must be added the developments in Lebanon.
Apparently, the US's new policy for Lebanon is to ignore the fact that two
weeks ago, the Doha agreement between Hizbullah and the Siniora government
transferred control of the country to Hizbullah and its state sponsor Iran.
In her speech before AIPAC, Rice applauded the Doha agreement as a "positive
step." Earlier in the week, in a visit to Beirut, Undersecretary of Defense
for Policy Eric Edelman announced that the US intends to increase its
assistance to the Lebanese army which takes its orders from Hizbullah and
Iran.
So through its serial capitulation to its enemies, the US has convinced
elBaradei that Washington has washed its hands of the war.
That of course leaves Israel.
For the past five years, Israel's leaders - from Ariel Sharon to Ehud
Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and Eli Yishai — have acted as though
Iran's nuclear program is someone else's responsibility. "Washington is
leading the campaign against Iran," everyone has said. Aside from issuing
periodic backhanded threats, Israel has developed no coherent diplomatic or
coercive policy for actually preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons
by itself.
Israel can delude itself no longer in thinking that someone else will
protect it from annihilation. ElBaradei's lack of concern that "crazies"
will attack Iran shows the Israeli people that if we wish to survive, we
must ensure that our leaders understand that we alone are responsible for
our security and survival.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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