Have we learned nothing from the shameful and shameless run-up to the invasion of Iraq? Then, Mohammed El-Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Egyptian head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, quietly but firmly said that as far as he and his UN agency were concerned, there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons or the materials to make them.
His conclusion was simply swept aside as the US and the British tore into the UN inspector, Hans Blix, determined to show that their worst warnings about Saddam were based on fact. El-Baradei and Blix proved right in their denial. Jack Straw and the hapless (in this case) Colin Powell were wrong.
So here we are, nearly five years later, and exactly the same is happening over Iran. Once again the UN process of inspection is in the firing line. Once again it is the figure of El-Baradei being roundly abused and told, more or less openly by the US and British, that his work is worthless, his opinions are of no consequence and that his proper place is sitting quietly by while the European Union and the UN Security Council got on with punishing Iran through sanctions.
And what has the poor man done to deserve this abuse? He had simply concluded that, while there was evidence that Iran had hidden some of its nuclear activities from the agency, there was no firm evidence that it was in fact developing nuclear weapons or diverting materials from its civilian nuclear program.
Without proof but with suspicion he preferred to use the negotiating tools provided by Iran’s commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to press for intrusive inspection and to reach a new deal with Tehran to answer a series of specific questions over the autumn.
A gross abuse of his position, fulminated the Americans, British, French and Germans. He should have left it to the Security Council and the Europeans to pin the Iranians against the wall with a program of financial and trade sanctions. All El-Baradei was achieving, they charged, was to allow Iran more time to procrastinate and confuse while they proceeded with producing weapons-grade material. If negotiations were to be pursued they were better done by the triumvirate of Britain-France-Germany and then with the maximum pressure of implied further action if Iran didn’t give up its uranium enrichment.
To ram the message home, the new French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, this week talked openly about the prospect of “war” against Iran, earning the rebuke from Tehran that “using crisis-making words is against France’s high historical and cultural position”, a rebuff repeated by Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, when Kouchner visited Moscow on Tuesday. Moscow, he said, in front of his guest, was “very worried about the growing number of voices considering military action”.
As well they might be, for, since Bush’s speech earlier this month, the drumbeat of war has grown ever louder in the capitals of the West. Just as before the invasion of Iraq, the threats of military action are accompanied by assurances that negotiation is still the preferred route.
It’s not the way — as the Iranians say with typical teasing — for civilized societies to proceed and the Europeans should back away from it. At the moment there is an impasse. On the one side are those, including London and Washington, who believe that Iran is determined to get the bomb and must be stopped at all costs. On the other side are the Iranians who, for all their internal differences, regard the ability to enrich uranium and pursue nuclear technology at least for peaceful purposes as their right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and a matter of national pride. Between the two parties is now total distrust — the West of Iran’s ultimate purposes and the Iranians of America’s ultimate wish to force regime change on them. Neither side seems in any mood to compromise.
The obvious, or “civilized”, step at this point would be to use the offices of a neutral third party to test out the sincerity of the two positions, which is in a way exactly what the much maligned El-Baradei is doing. Whatever you think of Iranian good faith, it cannot be bad at this time to pose questions, seek inspections and involve them in dialogue. To dismiss the UN’s specialist smacks of insincerity on our part.
But then that is exactly what happened in 2003 — we said that we really wanted diplomacy and then went ahead with a predetermined war regardless of the UN, regardless of domestic and international opinion and regardless of the consequences.
