Israel Matzav

What was in the IAEA report on Iran

At Contentions, Emanuele Ottolenghi does some reading between the lines of what may be Mohamed ElBaradei's last report on Iran as head of the IAEA.

ElBaradei’s swan song is thus typical — diffuse, noncommittal, and befogging to the end. It praises Iran for token gestures and delicately refuses to compromise its evenhandedness by taking on the mullahs’ more serious stonewalling or countering their claims that evidence about their nuclear program is fabricated. Nevertheless, four important points emerge:

1. Iran is still not answering questions about the military dimensions of its program, which evidence in the hands of the IAEA shows cannot be denied.

2. Iran is accumulating low-enriched uranium (LEU) at a rate of approximately 2.77 kgs a day, which means it will have enough LEU for a second weapon by February 2010. At the current pace, it is producing enough LEU to yield enough weapons-grade material, once the LEU is reprocessed, to build one weapon a year.

3. Iran’s installed centrifuges currently number 8,308 — a steady increase in machinery (though not in active machines) over the past few months.

4. Iran refuses to apply the revised code of its safeguards agreement with regard to designs of new facilities and modifications of existing ones. (Iran is required to provide speedy communication of such plans to the agency.) This is especially worrisome when it comes to the power plant scheduled to be built in Darkhovin, the designs of which IAEA inspectors have not seen.

The good news is that ElBaradei is about to be replaced. The bad news is that the foot draggers in the international community will seize upon his last report to delay further any concerted strategy to deal with Iran. And the appetite for joint U.S.-European action or the like is even lower here in Western Europe than it is in Washington.

As sad as that is, I'm not sure it matters anymore. It's way too late for sanctions to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons anyway. There is only one way left.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:28 AM