The Critical Role of the IAEA, and Its Director General, in Any Nuclear Deal With Iran

According to The Wall Street Journal (and, I would assume, many other media outlets), the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations agency, is to play a key role in the Obama administration’s proposed agreement Iran’s nuclear program.  According to the Journal:

“The Vienna-based IAEA will be tasked with policing Iran’s nuclear sites and ensuring it doesn’t work on a covert weapons program, as well as extracting answers from Tehran on its covert nuclear activity in past years. …

The U.N. agency will also have a critical say in the timing of the lifting of international sanctions by judging when Iran has completed initial steps to roll back its overall nuclear program.”

The Journal notes that some U.S. lawmakers and Mideast diplomats worry

“whether the IAEA will have the mandate, manpower and resources to effectively police Iran.

They [note] that the agency has failed to detect covert nuclear programs in Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya in past decades.  And they [say] Tehran has repeatedly stonewalled the IAEA’s decadelong probe into allegations Iran secretly developed nuclear weapons technologies.”

Let me add another concern; actually, a bigger one.  Under the leadership of its current Director General, Yukiya Amano of Japan, who was elected to the position in July 2009, the IAEA has done an outstanding job.  Maybe it did not detect everybody’s cheating, but Director General Amano has called out Iran when it wouldn’t allow the IAEA to do the inspections it wanted to do under nuclear agreements Iran is already a party to.  And when the IAEA had suspicions of Iranian violations, Director General Amano publicly stated them. 

The prior Director General of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt, did not do this.  Too often, Director General ElBaradei seemed to look for excuses for Iranian intransigence and failed to call public attention to their violations.  He worried so much about upsetting Iran that the IAEA failed to adequately report on Iran’s failure to comply with its agreements.  Director General ElBaradei seemed to think it was better to not confront Iran and to soft pedal its non-compliance.

And therein lies the problem.  By giving the IAEA such a big role in policing Iran’s compliance with any nuclear agreement, we are relying not only on the IAEA having the resources to do its job, but also on the IAEA standing up to Iran and reporting clearly and publicly on what it finds – or isn’t allowed to find.  The IAEA under Director General Amano is doing this job.  The IAEA did not adequately do it under Mohamed ElBaradei.  So the question for the Obama administration, and the other nations negotiating with Iran, is this:  How do we make sure the IAEA has a Director General who understands the IAEA’s job is to aggressively police Iran’s compliance with any agreement and to report on any violations it finds and any inspections it is not allowed to make – and not just make excuses for Iran?