Whoever’s on the Nobel committee this year, let me give you a big kiss. Choosing Mohammed El Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency to receive the 2005 Peace Prize warms my heart for three reasons: 1) both have deserved it for years; 2) it’s recognition that the smirky American rightwing attitude toward international agencies is gravely misplaced; and 3) it pokes Washington in the eye, but that is redundant.
I haven’t been over to Little Green Footballs or RedState or other such sites, but I can smell the smoke all the way over here from the ignition of their second tantrum of the week – the delightful Ms. Harriet Miers being the first. Not, mind you, that I haven’t occasionally been disturbed by the Nobel committee’s choice, Mr. Henry Kissinger comes to mind. But, mostly, they choose well, each year showing that individuals (both obscure and famous), voluntary associations and multilateral agencies can make a difference for peace.
Naturally, the Bush administration wants the IAEA and its director to perform as its agent in all things, just as it did in the case of weapons inspector Hans Blix. Acting contrariwise risks having one’s competence and impartiality called into question. In the case of El Baradei, these methods were combined with attempts to smear and humiliate the man. Par for the course in this administration, as anybody who’s watching knows too well. White House slimeballs even bugged El Baradei’s phones in hopes they would find something to incriminate him of over-friendliness toward the Iranians so they could use this evidence to replace him. They couldn’t find anything incriminating and they couldn’t find a replacement, although they were once keen on Alexander Downer, the Australian Foreign Minister. El Baradei was selected for a third term last June, after months of what used to be called diplomatic intrigue.
What jerks the Administration’s chain more than anything else is that El Baradei was dead right about Saddam’s lack of a nuclear weapons development program. And, furthermore, despite all their slanders, El Baradei has done much to budge the difficult-to-budge Iranians to get them to make their nuclear program utterly transparent, which they have not been willing to do.
While Iran denies it has nuclear weapons ambitions, for 20 years, it hid a laboratory-scale centrifuge program, which, if massively scaled up could produce the highly enriched uranium needed to make nuclear warheads. It’s apparent that A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program now under house arrest for …uh …nuke entrepreneurialism, passed on to Iran materiel and advice for building nuclear weapons. Given that Tehran has consistently deceived the IAEA, and one of Iran’s long-time leaders has said that the country should not fear using nukes against Israel, and Israel has made barely veiled threats that it might strike preemptively if nothing is done, and Iran’s is run by an unsavory autocracy, and there’s a longstanding blood feud with the United States (which is now engaged in a war next door and is led ideologically by men who have openly called for violently ousting the mullahs), it’s obvious that El Baradei’s job is a delicate matter of balance. Could the agency and El Baradei be tougher on Iran? Maybe. But there’s certainly no evidence that a tougher stance would accomplish more than has been done so far, even if the most recent moves by Tehran are disappointing.
No, what really irks the White House isn’t lack of toughness or partiality. It’s that El Baradei refuses, like Hans Blix, to be one of Bush & Company’s sock puppets. The NeoCons have to put up with his being right about Iraq, as this April 2005 piece in Think Progress describes so well:
He Was Right About Nuclear Weapons: IAEA Director ElBaradei told the United Nations that nuclear experts had found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In February 2003, he warned the White House “We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq.” President Bush’s nomination to the U.N., John Bolton, attacked him, saying that was “impossible to believe.” (Today, two years after the invasion of Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction have been found and, in fact, the “intelligence” provided by Bolton’s Office of Special Plans turned out to be “dead wrong.”)
He Was Right About Uranium: In March 2003, El Baradei said the “documents which formed the basis for [the White House’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” Vice President Cheney, asked about this a week later, said, “Mr. El Baradei frankly is wrong.” (The documents turned out to be fakes. Cheney, frankly, was wrong.)
He Was Right About Aluminum Tubes: In March 2003, ElBaradei said nuclear experts found “no indication” that Iraq tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes for a centrifuge to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice ignored that finding and claimed in July 2003 that “the consensus view” in the intelligence community was that the tubes “were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons.” (The tubes, in fact, were not for use for weaponizing uranium. They were the wrong size — “too narrow, too heavy, too long” for a centrifuge. They had a special coating to protect them from the weather, which was “not consistent” with use in a centrifuge, as it could cause bad reactions with uranium.)
All this they must put up with. Then they have to put up with El Baradei’s being willing to put the nuke elephant in the room – Israel’s “ambiguous” collection of nuclear warheads. And they have to put up with his criticism of the Bush Administration’s eagerness to build mini-nukes in what violates the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And they have to put up with his criticism of the U.S. and other NPT heavies whose own nuke behavior contributes to proliferation by ignoring Article VI of the treaty.
Now, oh happy day, they have to put up with his Nobel.
