ElBaradei's New Brief, Same as His Old Brief [Iran Nukes]

The buzz circulating now is that IAEA Director Mohammed ElBaradei said on al-Arabiya that Iran could be months away from producing a nuclear weapon, as noted by AllahPundit at Hot Air and Jeff Stein at Congressional Quarterly. Hot Air actually nails it in interpreting that ElBaradei is not so much making a statement about the state of the Iranian nuclear-weapons program as he is projecting himself and the IAEA as the world's only line of defense against a nuclear-armed Iran. Frankly, there is no substantiative historical reason to place faith in such a claim.

What's more, just about all analyses completely ignore Iran's pursuit of a plutonium-based weapon through external acquisition and production beyond Iran's borders and beneath the IAEA and Western international radar. With nearly ten months of scrub time, Syria is only now entertaining the idea of limited and restricted IAEA inspections of the nuclear facility destroyed by Israel last September 6.

This "only line of defense" claim comes from the same UN "nuclear watchdog" that has no enforcement mechanism and the same one that failed to detect and/or deter North Korea, India, and Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons.

This is also the same IAEA which failed to stop Saddam Hussein's domestic program, destroyed by the Israelis at Osirak. Should it be mentioned that ElBaradei and the IAEA also failed to detect and prevent or stop Saddam's outsourced program, uncovered and halted by others in Qaddafi's Libya?

And, again, the same IAEA which failed to detect the domestic Iranian program until Iranian dissidents exposed the program with irrefutable evidence the IAEA was incapable of gathering itself.

And, of course, this is the same IAEA which failed to halt A. Q. Khan's illicit international nuclear black-market enterprise, which supplied and traded with the aforementioned Iranian and North Korean programs, among many others.

This is the organization that, according to ElBaradei, is at the vanguard of nuclear security and the sole reliable buffer between nuclear arms and the Iranian state sponsors of international terrorism.

ElBaradei said in the al-Arabiya interview, "I always think of resigning in the event of a military strike," because he "would conclude that there is no mechanism left for me to defend." He went on to say, "I am doing this out of the conviction that I am defending shared values." What values are shared -- presumably with the Iranian mullah regime -- is unclear.

However, keep in mind that this is the same ElBaradei who told the BBC that "I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.'" That's quite a different "brief" than a role in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon through inspection regimes.

Unfortunately, ElBaradei's only actual "brief" is to make continued assessment of the Iranian nuclear program. His agency has no enforcement mechanism and thus reports to the UN Security Council when measures of enforcement are required. In fact, he and his agency have no input on enforcement or consequence at all. Monitor and report -- that's the IAEA's job.

Why we should be expected to put faith in a man and organization that have yet to prevent a single determined state actor from embarking upon and developing nuclear weapons is a very fair question. If ElBaradei is hesitant to call the domestic Iranian uranium-based nuclear-weapons program what it is, it really doesn't matter much. It requires no IAEA intellectual assistance to ponder responsibly why Iran was partnered with North Korea on a plutonium project inside Syria. More Iranian medical advances, perhaps?

There is no sign -- based on either current circumstance or past track record -- that ElBaradei and the IAEA are able to stop the Iranian quest.

And if Elbaradei cannot prevent it, then he should stay out of the way of whatever unfortunate measures may at least have a shot, if or when it comes to that. If Elbaradei quits only after, there will have been far greater tragedies in history.

ElBaradei suffers from the same disease institutional internationalists share: a primary duty to the process and a secondary duty to its ostensible beneficiaries. He would be happiest with an Iran that is subject to IAEA inspections, but that isn't going to happen. Next to that is endless negotiation. Third of all is any sort of permanent resolution. He may be a very nice fellow with all sorts of benevolence toward his fellow man, but those are his priorities because benevolence to his fellow bureaucrat comes first.

But I agree broadly with the author - Iran's actual progress is quite unknown and even less predictable. As far as their slogging through to a purely domestically-developed uranium bomb, we've probably got some time. It's impossible for an ordinary citizen to sift through the fog and nearly so for a professional with decent intelligence assets, but bombast aside it doesn't actually sound as if it's going very well for them in that direction at the moment.

Acquisition of a plutonium bomb is another matter. Outright purchase is imaginable; possibly somewhere among the nuclear nations is someone stupid or venal enough to sell one to them. But that gives them one bomb. That would be the one they use on Tel Aviv if the real crazies have the football, and in that government they probably will.

But I'd suggest a slightly alternate strategy. That "bought" one doesn't go off until they have an arsenal sufficient for their own deterrence - a threat to the Saudi oil fields, for example. What I think they're really after is a nuclear umbrella (always more perception than fact) behind which they can run their current programs of destabilizing their regional neighbors with relative impunity (well, more so than now, even). Ahmadinejad may be crazy enough to yearn for the apocalypse but the other turban boys have earthly rewards in mind - also more so than now, even. Why risk a revenge nuking when victory may be gained by other people's blood and at a safe distance?

So I think we're probably in it for the long run, or at least that'd be the way to bet. "Long" here may be only a couple of years. But the light at the end of that particular tunnel is that of a regional nuclear arms race at best, nuclear blasts in certain capital cities at worst. I don't see it ending any other way at the moment.

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