Out of the Shadows

Global Warming/Climate Change has been the scam of the decade, but surely the "international community's" efforts to negotiate with Iran RE: its nuclear program ranks as a close second: UN Official says Iran Inquiry Is At a Dead End

The director general of the United Nations nuclear watchdog declared in unusually blunt language on Thursday that Iran had stonewalled investigators about evidence that the country had worked on nuclear weapons design, and that his efforts to reveal the truth had “effectively reached a dead end.”

The comments by the official,Mohamed ElBaradei, came four days before he is to leave office after 12 years at the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. His remarks refocus attention on Iran’s alleged work on weapons design at the moment that the West is debating how to respond after Tehran backed away from a commitment it made in early October to temporarily send much of its nuclear fuel abroad.

Dr. ElBaradei’s remarks also came as President Obama’s end-of-year deadline is approaching to reassess whether the United States should move toward what Secretary of StateHillary Rodham Clinton has termed “crippling sanctions” on Iran.

Israeli officials, meanwhile, have said that they will not consider taking military action until Mr. Obama’s deadline runs out, leaving hanging the suggestion — maybe the bluff — that they are preparing for that possibility in 2010.

Dr. ElBaradei’s statement was a sharp departure in tone, and a tacit acknowledgment that his behind-the-scenes effort to broker a deal had collapsed. In the past, he has privately talked about Iran’s refusal to answer the agency’s questions about weapons work, but has stopped short of rebuking the country in public for fear of shutting off any chance of future cooperation.

Wow. Thanks Mr. El-Baradei. They gave this guy a Nobel Peace Prize?

For those of us on the simple-minded end of the spectrum, the truth has been readily knowable: Iran has been actively seeking nukes, its government is too dangerous and hostile to be trusted with such power, and the US (not the "community") should do whatever it takes to prevent this from happening. But, for those on the nuanced end, this lacked subtlety, so we've had literally years of negotiations, conferences, useless UN votes, at least one highly politicized and discredited NIE estimate, and wise words from the diplomatic/intelligence communities telling us how neo-con fantasies about Iranian nukes were leading us all astray. All those words and the end result is: Iran's nuclear program has been able to proceed apace.

El-Baradei and his ilk can express all the frustration they want. The truth is: the sophisticates in the internationalist wing of the foreign policy world have enabled the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons.