Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) is due in Washington on Thursday, having been summoned by Condoleezza Rice for a meeting. In Vienna, where Dr. ElBaradei is based, reports (AP) say he won’t heed U.S. calls for him to become tougher on Iran in exchange for U.S. support for his campaign for another term, while in Washington, the NY Times reports that the administration has signaled that it will no longer object to his appointment to a third term next Monday at an IAEA Board meeting. The good news is that Washington’s objection to Dr. ElBaradei’s continued directorship is echoed by no other board member, so dropping it is merely a face-saving move on the part of the U.S.
But Dr. ElBaradei’s situation is a key indication of how the Bush administration views diplomacy and the work of international agencies. This administration has made it clear that their preference for the directorship of the IAEA (or indeed any international body), is someone who will echo American claims and who will do our bidding, no questions asked. Dr. ElBaradei’s sin, in the eyes of John Bolton and other administration officials, is that he has been absolutely impartial in his dealings with Iraq (prior to the war) and with Iran (ever since). In Iraq, the U.S. wanted him to quickly declare Saddam Hussein wildly in pursuit of nukes and hiding other WMDs, while with Iran the U.S. wants him to simply declare that that country is in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. In both cases, ElBaradei has been right in taking the positions he has: his inspectors were in Iraq attempting to prove U.S. claims and were withdrawn only when our bombs were about to fall on them and the country, and in Iran he has merely said that there is no concrete proof that the regime is pursuing weapons rather than energy, although his inspectors are there trying to find out. As for Iran being in violation of the NPT, well, technically they’re not, even if they resume enrichment, so what the U.S. wants is for him to abandon his impartiality, the one asset he has in dealing with a Third World suspicious of CIA involvement in every international body. And what would be wrong with that, since surely it’s better to be safe than sorry? What if he took a much stronger stand against Iran, or had been quicker to judge Iraq? Leaving aside any moral or legal questions (we hardly want our own judges and juries to be anything less than impartial), if the Director of the IAEA had gone to the Dick Cheney school of diplomacy he might have received more invitations to Crawford but probably none from Tehran. And that’s where it’s more important for him to be welcome.
The Bush administration seems to have forgotten that diplomacy is a human endeavor designed to avoid, rather than start, conflict and war. How, if the Director followed American instructions and declared Iran in violation of the NPT, would conflict be avoided? What could Iran possibly do, other than accelerate its weapons program, kick out any inspectors, and mobilize its troops?