Ex-Head of IAEA Says Iran is Not a "Clear and Present Danger"

ElBaradei has spoken.

The former Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) said in a new published report that he had not seen "a shred of evidence" that Iran was "building nuclear-weapons facilities and using enriched materials." Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient who spent 12 years at the IAEA, told investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, "I don't believe Iran is a clear and present danger. All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran."

www.counterpunch.com...

Could this be politcal angling on his part in the run up to the Egyptian elections? A show of intention to the Egyptian people and the World that he will not be willing to tow the American line in relations with other countries in THEIR region?

I personally think not. He has been pretty consistant on his line with Iranian weapon's ambitions as he was with Iraq's

While the Bush administration claimed that aluminum tubes being delivered to Iraq were intended for enriching uranium to weapon-usable levels, U.N. inspectors on the ground determined they would be used to fire rockets, according to ElBaradei.

He delivered that information to the U.N. Security Council on January 27, 2003. One day later, Bush reaffirmed the U.S. stance on the tubes' intended use during his State of the Union address, ElBaradei noted. There were similar differences over Iraq's alleged attempts to acquire uranium from Niger and over a claim from the since-discredited source known as "Curveball" that the Hussein regime possessed mobile biological weapons laboratories (see GSN, Feb. 15).

"I was aghast at what I was witnessing," ElBaradei wrote. He characterized the invasion as "aggression where there was no imminent threat" and said he believes hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens have died in conflict over the last eight years. The question of the war's legality should be submitted to the World Court, ElBaradei stated. That being the case, "should not the International Criminal Court investigate whether this constitutes a 'war crime' as determine who is accountable?"

gsn.nti.org...

Some interesting and revealing information on what already most of us knew, active U.S. spy activity(And U.K./Israeli) within Iran with the help of their Green Movement collegues.

Hersh revealed that over the past six years, soldiers from the Joint Special Operations Force, working with Iranian intelligence assets, "put in place cutting-edge surveillance techniques" to spy on suspected Iran facilities.

These included:

# Surreptitiously removing street signs and replacing them with signs containing radiation sensors.
# Removing bricks from buildings suspected of containing nuclear enrichment activities and replacing them "with bricks embedded with radiation-monitoring devices."
# Spreading high-powered sensors disguised as stones randomly along roadways where a suspected underground weapon site was under construction.
# Constant satellite coverage of major suspect areas in Iran.

Going beyond these spy activities, two Iranian nuclear scientists last year were assassinated and Hersh says it is widely believed in Tehran that the killers were either American or Israeli agents. Hersh quotes W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army intelligence officer and former ranking Defense Intelligence Agency(DIA) analyst on the Middle East as saying that after the disaster in Iraq, "Analysts in the intelligence community are just refusing to sign up this time for a lot of baloney."

www.counterpunch.com...

That last quote is hopeful and I hope it is a well held view in the US military.

The article finishes.

The website Politico.com reports in its May 31 issue that a senior Administration intelligence official asserted Hersh's article was nothing more than "a slanted book report."

Don't believe anything until it is offically denied right?

reply to post by Peruvianmonk

Well this was obvious that Iran doesn't have any nukes at all however
I dont think Anonymous will believe that after all they already are on operation on Iran , still i wonder what this could mean for there manufactured revolution in Iran.

Star and flag for you thread op.

Iraq ran a clandestine nuclear program right under ElBaradei's nose in the late 80's early 90's ... why the hell do we still think he's credible?

reply to post by SirMike

Mohamed el Baradei is an Egyptian-born lawyer who headed the United Nations' IAEA or International Atomic Energy Agency from 1997 to 2009.

middleeast.about.com...

There was a clandestine nuclear programme in Iraq during this period under the UN sanctions? I don't think so, as the complete lack of WMD evidence found before and after the 2003 invasion seems to suggest.

The Bush administration was an outspoken enemy of El Baradei. The administration, the Washington Post reported in 2004, "has dozens of intercepts of Mohamed ElBaradei's phone calls with Iranian diplomats and is scrutinizing them in search of ammunition to oust him as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency."

The report added that "the efforts against ElBaradei demonstrate the lengths some within the administration are willing to go to replace a top international diplomat who questioned U.S. intelligence on Iraq and is now taking a cautious approach on Iran."

middleeast.about.com...

As the Bush administration was trying to get rid of him it does lend ElBaradei quite a bit of credibility in my eyes.

Of course Iran is not a clear and present danger. The clear and present
danger is the CIA and their handlers. They are putting the whole
world in danger. They have overdosed on the blue pill.

reply to post by orbitbaby


It's a difficult one.

Iran is demonized in western press. There is no doubt that their government is repressive to some extent especially since the Green Movement uprising, and have some laws, in particular attaining to the death penalty, that I find abhorrent.

But for me the Iranian general election in 2009 was not rigged. Ahmadinejad at the time had a lot of support, especially from the rural poor who relied upon the subsidies for food and energy that his government provided.

And yes you are right, Iran is not a clear and present danger. IF it is developing nuclear weapons it is a defensive strategy aimed at preventing any regime change which is what the American/Israeli/European hostility is really all about.

It does arm Hamas it does arm Hezbollah it may to some extent arm the Taliban and does have a major influence with the Shia led government in Iraq and with Al-Sadar's Mehdi Army. But what major power in the region wouldn't? When you have the American troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the two countries bordering Iran, it seems to make perfect bloodletting sense to arm your enemies enemies.

As for the role of the CIA? i can imagine they are fully involved in the spying on Iran along with the military, however I can imagine there are some more sensible heads in the CIA who are quite uneasy about any potential backlash from the Iranians.