THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 53, February 25, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
MOHAMED ELBARADEI'S REAL AGENDA
By Danielle Pletka & Michael Rubin
WHITEWASHING IRAN'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM: THE WORK OF MOHAMED ELBARADEI AS DIRECTOR
GENERAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY -- ELBARADEI AS A STRONGLY BIASED POLITICAL FIGURE,
ONE ANIMATED BY ANTIPATHY FOR ISRAEL & THE WEST & ON WHAT HAS INCREASINGLY BECOME A SINGLE-MINDED
CRUSADE TO RESCUE IRANIAN & OTHER FAVORED REGIMES FROM CHARGES OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROLIFERATION
-- ELBARADEI'S SELF-IMPOSED MISSION TO HAMSTRUNG EFFORTS OF THE U.S.A. TO CONSTRAIN IRAN'S NUCLEAR
WEAPONS PROGRAM
FULL STORY:
On Friday, February 22, 2008, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei submitted
a report on Iran's nuclear program to the IAEA's Board of Governors. It concluded that, barring "one major remaining issue
relevant to the nature of Iran's nuclear programme" — including a mysterious "green salt project" — Iran's explanations of
its suspicious nuclear activities "are consistent with [the IAEA's] findings [or at least] not inconsistent."
The report represents Mr. ElBaradei's best effort to whitewash Tehran's record. Earlier this month, on Iranian television, he
made clear his purpose, announcing that he expected "the issue would be solved this year." And if doing so required that
he do battle against the IAEA's technical experts, reverse previous conclusions about suspect programs, and allow
designees of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad an unprecedented role in crafting a "work plan" that would allow
the regime to receive a cleaner bill of health from the IAEA — so be it.
Mr. ElBaradei's report culminates a career of freelancing and fecklessness which has crippled the reputation of the
organization he directs. He has used his Nobel Prize to cultivate an image of a technocratic lawyer interested in peace and
justice and above politics. In reality, he is a deeply political figure, animated by antipathy for the West and for Israel on
what has increasingly become a single-minded crusade to rescue favored regimes from charges of proliferation.
Mr. ElBaradei assumed the IAEA Directorship on December 1, 1997. On his watch, but undetected by his agency, Iran
constructed its covert enrichment facilities and, according to the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, engaged in
covert nuclear-weapons design. India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear godfather,
exported nuclear technology around the world.
In 2003, Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi confessed to an undetected weapons effort. Mr. ElBaradei's response? He
rebuked the U.S.A. and U.K. for bypassing him. When Israel recently destroyed what many believe was a secret (also
undetected) nuclear facility in Syria, Mr. ElBaradei told the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh that it is "unlikely that this
building was a nuclear facility," although his agency has not physically investigated the site.
The IAEA's mission is to verify that "States comply with their commitments, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and other
non-proliferation agreements, to use nuclear material and facilities only for peaceful purposes." Yet, in 2004, Mr. ElBaradei
wrote in the New York Times that, "We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for
some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction, yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security."
IAEA technical experts have complained anonymously to the press that the latest report on Iran was revamped to suit the
Director's political goals. In 2004, Mr. ElBaradei sought to purge mention of Iranian attempts to purchase beryllium metal,
an important component in a nuclear charge, from IAEA documents. He also left unmentioned Tehran's refusal to grant
IAEA inspectors access to the Parchin military complex, where satellite imagery showed a facility seemingly designed to
test and produce nuclear weapons.
The IAEA's latest report leaves unmentioned allegations by an Iranian opposition group of North Korean work on nuclear
warheads at Khojir, a military research site near Tehran. It also amends previous conclusions and closes the book on
questions about Iran's work on polonium 210 — which nuclear experts suspect Iran experimented with for use as an
initiator for nuclear weapons, but which the regime claims was research on radioisotope batteries. In 2004, the IAEA
declared itself "somewhat uncertain regarding the plausibility of the stated purpose of the [polonium] experiments." Today,
it finds these explanations "consistent with the Agency's findings and with other information available."
The IAEA Director seems intent on undercutting UN Security Council diplomacy. Just weeks after President George Bush
toured the Middle East to build Arab support for pressure on Tehran, Mr. ElBaradei appeared on Egyptian television on
February 5, 2008, to urge Arabs in the opposite direction, insisting Iran was cooperating and should not be pressured. And,
as he grows more and more isolated from Western powers intent on disarming Iran, Mr. ElBaradei has found champions in
the developing and Arab world. They cheer his self-imposed mission — to hamstring U.S. efforts to constrain Iran's
program, whether or not the regime is violating its non-proliferation obligations or pursuing nuclear weapons.
In working to undermine sanctions, however, Mr. ElBaradei demeans the purpose of his agency and undercuts its
non-proliferation mission. He also makes military action all the more likely.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Military Weaponry & International Security:
Weapons of Mass Destruction & Arms Control
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Danielle Pletka is Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
Research. Ms. Pletka's areas of research and analysis include the Middle East, South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan),
terrorism, and weapons proliferation. In her capacity as the American Enterprise Institute's expert on Iraq, Pletka has developed
a series of conferences on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, as well as a project designed to promote constitutional democracy in
the Arab world. From 1992 to 2002, she was a senior professional staff member for Near East and South Asia with the United
States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, where she was Chief Aide to Senator Jesse Helms. Prior to working with the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pletka was a staff writer for Insight Magazine (1987-1992) and an editorial assistant
with the Los Angeles Time and Reuters, in Jerusalem (1984-1985).
Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Ms. Pletka and Dr. Rubin was originally published in the Wall Street Journal, February 25,
2008, and can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which
seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1859)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
February 25, 2008
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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