Israel Matzav

ElBaradei protects the 'Iranian brothers'

Last week, I reported that the IAEA was covering up information that indicated that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capability. In Wednesday's New York Times, a similar story is presented in which outgoing IAEA director Mohammed ElBaradei is trying to protect the 'Iranian brothers' by resisting pressure from the United States and Europe for a public airing of the evidence against Iran.

The request has touched off an internal debate in the agency over how directly to confront Iran over its continued refusal, over several years, to answer questions about documents and computer files suggesting military-led efforts to design a nuclear weapon. Iran has charged that the documents, many of which came from American, Israeli and European intelligence services, are fabrications. The agency, according to current and former officials there, has studied them with care and determined that they are probably genuine.

“What we and all the allies are pressing for is for the full case to be laid out, in public,” one senior Obama administration official said last week, speaking anonymously because he was discussing intelligence data.

The administration’s push for an open discussion of Iran’s suspected weapons program, and for tougher sanctions, reflects growing pessimism about efforts to engage with the country’s leaders. Administration officials said that while they had received some communications from the Iranian leadership before the presidential election in June, there had been no communications of substance since.

But agency officials say that Mohamed ElBaradei, the departing director general, resisted a public airing, fearing that such a presentation would make the agency appear biased toward the West in the effort to impose what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently called “crippling” sanctions. Dr. ElBaradei, who has argued for allowing Iran to maintain a token capacity to produce uranium under strict inspection, has said that the evidence does not create an airtight case against Iran.

So the administration has now wasted eight months waiting for Iran to come talk, it is going to have trouble getting sanctions on refined oil past Russia and China, the Director General of the IAEA is trying to protect Iran from having its true intentions disclosed, and Iran is looking to buy time again.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:21 PM