di
Sandra Giovanna
Giacomazzi
Last
December the
Norwegians awarded the Nobel Peace prize for the year 2005 to Mohamad
Elbaradei
and the UN agency that he directs the International Agency for Atomic
Energy
(IAEA). Even though the agency, like
the United Nations itself, was born from the will of two American
presidents, Dwight
D. Eisenhower and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the agency and its leader have
often
been in contrast with the present president of the United States,
George W.
Bush, for their very different positions concerning the nuclear threat
from
Iraq and Iran. The Bush administration
even tried to block the third and last four-year mandate of the
Egyptian
diplomat. The disaccord between the IAEA and Washington sparked even
further
right before the war in Iraq in 2003 when the agency challenged the
declarations made by the United States regarding Saddam Hussein's
possession of
weapons of mass destruction.
Although
such weapons
were never found, the slow motion approach of the diplomat is revealing
itself
as even less prudent. The
fundamentalist state that hid its nuclear program form the world for
two decades
is now publicly bragging about it. Even during the peace prize
ceremony, an
Iranian official declared that his country would be enriching uranium
for
nuclear fuel, notwithstanding international efforts to prevent it from
doing
so. The accords, which were already a
compromise, provided for the Russians to do the enriching of the
uranium for
the Iranians. At that time, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of the atomic
energy
organization in Iran, didn’t say when they intended to initiate the
procedure,
but it didn’t take long to find out that he wasn’t bluffing.
After
eighteen years of
deception, three years of negotiations, the discovery of seven
undeclared
secret sites and a stock of missiles with nuclear capacity, even before
the
IAEA seals were broken last week, there were many who thought that the
bad
intentions of the Iranians were more than obvious.
Of
course Aghazadeh
denies that Iran’s nuclear program is for military purposes. However, after the repeated declarations of
his president, wishing that Isreal be wiped off the maps, it is
reasonable to
doubt his sincerity. Only a few weeks
ago, when others were already sounding the alarm bells, Elbaradei was
quoted as
saying “we can’t judge intentions” and declaring that he preferred a
“let’s
wait and see” approach.
The trouble is
that the present rules permit any country to get within 3 months of
potential
construction of nuclear arms before sanctions and forced inspections
are
imposed. These possibilities didn’t
seem to disturb the sleep of the gentlemen form Oslo when they decided
to
assign the peace prize to Elbaradei.
Now that Iran has decided to remove the IAED seals, one can
imagine that
the Nobel people will not only be having restless nights, but second
thoughts
for having awarded Elbaradei’s lax attitude.
Sandra Giovanna Giacomazzi, teaches
Government and
Economics in Turin, Italy. She is also a regular columnist for the
Roman daily,
“L’Opinione della Libertà”.
giogia@giogia.com
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