BOOK
REVIEW Compelling case for Iraq war crime tribunal
The Age of Deception: Nuclear
Diplomacy in Treacherous Times by
Mohamed ElBaradei
Reviewed by Kaveh L
Afrasiabi
This book, eloquently written by
a former director-general of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is a must read, both
for the wealth of information it provides on the
contentious issues of global nuclear diplomacy as
well as for the passionate and compelling case
that it presents for a war crime tribunal to
prosecute United States and
British leaders who instigated the calamitous
invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext of
weapons of mass destruction.
In blunt yet
sincere language steeped in international law,
ElBaradei writes that in light of the US's
complete "disdain for international norms" in its
invasion of Iraq, the United Nations should
request an opinion from the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) as to the legality of the Iraq war.
Convinced
that the overwhelming weight of evidence favors a
negative verdict if the ICJ ever braved such an
initiative, ElBaradei then makes a case for the
International Criminal Tribunal to "investigate
whether this constitutes a war crime". (pg 87)
Irrespective, ElBaradei is so morally
outraged by the blatant pulverization of a
sovereign Middle East country by a Western
superpower and its allies that he also advises the
Iraqis to demand war reparations - that is sure to
amount to tens of billions of dollars.
If
for nothing else, this book's value - in putting
self-righteous Western powers on the defensive and
depicting them as essentially rogue states that
have caused a new global anarchy by their willful
exercise of power without much regard for the
rights of others - is indispensable.
Divided into 12 chapters with a useful
conclusion on the future of nuclear diplomacy, the
book covers nearly three decades of the author's
involvement with various cases, ie, Iraq, North
Korea, Libya and Iran, the notorious "nuclear
bazaar of Abdul Qadeer Khan" in Pakistan, as well
as nuclear asymmetry and the hypocrisy and double
standard, not to mention outright deceptions,
marking the behavior of US and other Western
countries (along the familiar North-South divide).
In the chapters on Iraq, ElBaradei defends
the cherished record of his agency in refusing to
act as a sounding board for post 9/11 warmongering
US policies, which earned him the occasional venom
of US media that questioned his integrity. In
fact, ElBaradei is equally critical of the
compliant Western media that often act as indirect
apparatuses of state despite their wild claims of
neutrality and objectivity.
Although much
of what ElBaradei writes about the US-British
deceptions to go to war in Iraq is already
well-known, it is instructive to revisit those
"grotesque distortions" - as he puts it - from a
reputable source who for years was caught in the
maelstrom of contesting politics of
non-proliferation.
With respect to the
British role under premier Tony Blair, whom he
accuses of a false alarm on Iraq's chemical weapon
capability, ElBaradei actually underestimates the
degree to which London influenced Washington on
Iraq, characterizing this instead as a "one-way
street" with the British "acting as apologists for
US". (pg 67).
But, ElBaradei is not a
foreign policy expert and his shortcoming, in
detecting the American foreign policy elite's
vulnerability with respect to British political
influence, is forgivable. This is a minor defect
in a solid contribution that sheds much light on
how the US manipulated the UN atomic agency as
"bit players" in its scheme to invade Iraq.
It shows the Pandora's box opened by the
IAEA when it agreed to receive foreign
intelligence from member states spying on others,
thus opening the door to calibrated disinformation
often beyond the ability of the agency and its
meager resources to authenticate.
As a
result, today the IAEA has turned into a de facto
''nuclear detective agency" that constantly
receives tips from Western clients targeting
specific countries. Sooner or later, either this
unhealthy situation is rectified or we must expect
more gaping holes in the agency's credibility.
With respect to North Korea, which has
exited the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
and proliferated nuclear weapons without much
international backlash, ElBaradei blames the US's
failure to live up to its agreed commitment and
the fallacy of "attempts to contain proliferation
ambitions through confrontation, sanctions, and
isolation". (Pg 109)
He also writes about
Libya's voluntary disarmament in 2004, a decision
that the late Muammar Gaddafi now regrets in his
grave, given the likelihood that the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would have
thought twice about attacking Libya under the
guise of "responsibility to protect", thus making
a mockery of the UN, if Tripoli had retained a
nuclear shield.
For sure, this issue must
loom large on the mind of many developing nations
that have clashing interests with the
(increasingly bullying) Western powers.
ElBaradei has devoted a whole chapter to
the subject of nuclear double standards that
discusses, for instance, how South Korea's clear
evidence of non-compliance was shoved under the
rug by the US in 2004 simply because it is a US
allay.
The US and other privileged
nuclear-have nations have been derelict in their
NPT obligations to move toward nuclear
disarmament, some, like France and Britain,
modernizing their arsenals, while at the same time
having the audacity of taking the moral high
ground against countries suspected of clandestine
proliferation.
ElBaradei writes that in
the Middle East, "The greatest source of
frustration and anxiety was the regional asymmetry
of military power symbolized by Israel's arsenal."
(pg 223) And yet, Israel, which since its
bombardment of Iraq's nuclear facility in 1981 has
been mandated by the UN Security Council to place
its nuclear facilities under the IAEA inspections,
has evaded this obligation with impunity.
Regarding Iran, extensively dealt with in
four chapters, ElBaradei seeks to present a
balanced account that pinpoints the chronology of
events, interactions and negotiations that are
still ongoing as of this date, thus making the
book an indispensable tool for those who follow
the developments in the Iran nuclear crisis.
Since his retirement from the IAEA,
ElBaradei has repeatedly gone on record to state
that during his tenure at the agency he never saw
any evidence that Iran was proliferating nuclear
weapons.
What is more, he informs readers
that after the 2007 US intelligence report that
confirmed that Iran's program had been peaceful
since 2003, "I received a follow-up briefing by US
intelligence. They did not show the supposed
evidence that had let them to confirm the
existence of a past Iranian nuclear weapon
program, other than to refer to the same
unverified set of allegations about weaponization
studies that had already been discussed with the
agency." (pg 269)
He also writes, "The
Americans did acknowledge - as in most previous
intelligence briefings - that there was no
indication that Iran had undeclared nuclear
material." (pg 262) Indeed, this is important
information, given that in more than a dozen
reports on Iran the IAEA has repeatedly confirmed
the absence of any evidence of military diversion
of "declared nuclear material".
In Chapter
11, on the "squandered opportunities" with Iran,
the author writes about Iran-IAEA cooperation
through a workplan that resulted in the successful
resolution of the "six outstanding" issues that
had led to the IAEA's referral of Iran's file to
the UN Security Council.
Missing in this
book is any mention of that workplan's concluding
paragraph that stipulated the agency's treatment
of Iran's nuclear file as "routine" once those
issues were resolved. That this did not, and as of
today has not, happened is solely due to the
US-led disinformation campaign that burdened the
IAEA with new data coming from a stolen Iranian
lap top, even though ElBaradei readily admits that
"the problem was, no one knew if any of these was
real". (pg 281).
He discretely blames his
deputy, Ollie Heinnonen, now turned into a
valuable US asset from his recruitment by Harvard
University, of buying "into the US accusations"
(pg 281), and laments the fact that on a number of
occasions the US scuttled meaningful negotiation
with Iran by "refusing to take yes for an answer".
Questioning the US's negotiation strategy
toward Iran, in a memorable passage that rings
relevant to today's context of new multilateral
talks with Iran, ElBaradei writes: "It was naive
to ask Iran to give up everything before the start
of the talks and expect a positive response. But
the problem was familiar, nothing would satisfy,
short of Iran coming to the table completely
undressed." (pg 313)
In a clue to the
direct relevance of this book to the Iran nuclear
talks this weekend in Istanbul, where the US has
put its foot down by demanding Iran's suspension
of its 20% uranium enrichment, ElBaradei readily
admits that under the NPT, Iran has the right to
possess a nuclear fuel cycle, like "roughly a
dozen countries" around the world. Moreover, he
reminds us of the absence of a legal basis for the
US's demand, in light of the fact that "many
research reactors worldwide also use 90% enriched
uranium fuel for peaceful purposes, such as to
produce medial radioisotopes". (pg 14)
As
he puts it in the final chapter, on the quest for
human security, this cannot be a selective, or
rather elitist, process that benefits some while
depriving others. In today's increasingly
interdependent world, the idea that the threat of
nuclear proliferation can be contained while the
asymmetrical nuclear-have nations hold onto their
prized possessions and even use them to threaten
the non-nuclear nations, is simply a chimerical
dream that has a decent chance of turning into a
nightmare. This is the core message of ElBaradei's
timely book that cannot be possibly ignored.
The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy
in Treacherous Times by Mohamed ElBaradei.
Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New
York, 2011. ISBN-10: 0805093508. Price US$27, 322
pages with index 340 pages.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
Convinced
that the overwhelming weight of evidence favors a
negative verdict if the ICJ ever braved such an
initiative, ElBaradei then makes a case for the
International Criminal Tribunal to "investigate
whether this constitutes a war crime". (pg 87)
