IAEA: Between Noncompliant Iran and a Hard Line

By way of Total Wonkerr, late last week IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei broke his long silence as he responded to critics of the IAEA-Iran action plan during a special briefing with reporters in Vienna. (You can read accounts of the briefing by Reuters' Mark Heinrich, the Associated Press' George Jahn, and L'Agence France-Presse's Michael Adler.)

Here's an excerpt from Heinrich's account:

IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei said his agency would scrutinize Iran's pledge to cooperate by the end of the year and demand documents and other proof of good faith. If Iran reneged, it would jeopardize any grounds for future trust, he said.

He said critics had misread the pact in suggesting it ruled out future IAEA inquiries if new suspicions about Iranian activity arose, and lifted pressure on Iran to grant wider inspections or heed U.N. resolutions demanding it stop uranium enrichment, a process that can be used to make atom bombs.

"There have been back-seat drivers putting in their five cents saying this is not a good working arrangement," he told reporters invited into his Vienna office for a briefing.

"Iran can never get a pass (on their nuclear behavior) until we decide to give them a pass. They may say (in public statements) that their file is now closed, but that is up to us.

"My advice is to bear with us until we go through this process ... We have a timeline which will enable us by November- December to check clearly whether Iran is ready to work with us in good faith, or whether, as some like to say, Iran is just buying time ... which would absolutely backfire (for them)."

It's hopeful that ElBaradei recognized that, if Iran (once again) fails to cooperate with the IAEA, such failure, in the Director General's words, will "absolutely backfire." That said, the action plan does contain some potentially equivocal language, in that it is quite possible for the Iranian government and IAEA to interpret the terms of the plan differently (cf. Albright and Shire's analysis).

So, on the one hand, you have Iran's continuing noncompliance with its obligations under the NPT-IAEA safeguards system; and, on the other hand , a perhaps solidifying hard line.

Also worth checking out: Analysis: Iran's Plan for Nuclear Compliance by the Carnegie Endowment's Sharon Squassoni and Nima Gerami.

Update (September 12, 2007 @ 11:56 AM): Persbo on Iran and the IAEA's Potentially Diverging Interpretations of the Action Plan's Equivocal Language

VERTIC's Andreas Persbo writes in the comments section of his blog, Verfication:

I am back from the BA Festival of Science in York. Just to update the readership on a few things regarding the IAEA action plan. It emerged at a meeting I attended this morning that the Iranians have a very different interpretation of the plan, one where issues do get closed. According to this source, who is well connected with the Iranian establishment, the plan was drafted mostly by the Iranians. That is problematic, since the last thing this plan needs is bickering over its content. Then we'll have the Paris Agreement all over again. On the other hand, Iran simply cannot expect the Agency to conclude its investigations blindfolded and with one hand tied to its back. Not a single state on this planet would put any stock into the conclusions of such an investigation.

I'm curious to know why IAEA lawyers, in the first place, would consent to the inclusion of such equivocal language in the action plan.

Update (September 16, 2007 @ 7:42 AM): Video of ElBaradei's Brief Sep. 12th Briefing

By way of Verification, on September 12th IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei gave a very brief public briefing to reporters on the IAEA-Iran action plan. Video of that briefing is available here.

Posted by Robert at September 12, 2007 10:37 AM