Consider the IAEA comments on Iranian nuclear negotiations. The concept here is that the IAEA feels it could not maintain negotiations on Iran's nuclear program in the event of a military strike by Israel on Iran. That may well be true; but it comes alongside Iran's absolute refusal to negotiate on the issue:
ElBaradei's comments come as Iran stressed on Saturday it will not negotiate with world powers over its nuclear programme if it is required to suspend its enrichment activities.That is the only thing that we really want out of the negotiations: Iran not to have the capacity to build nuclear weapons. Iran says it won't negotiate on ending enrichment, which is the thing that would give it the capacity to build nuclear weapons.
"Suspending uranium enrichment has no logic behind it and it is not acceptable and the continuation of negotiation will not be based on suspension," Iranian government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters.
So, what do we get out of continuing negotiations? The right to maintain 24-hour camera surveillence of their enrichment activity. They won't stop doing what we'd like them not to do, but they will let us watch them do it, 24 hours a day.
I would very much like for there to be a diplomatic solution to this issue, but the IAEA tactic doesn't strike me as a step in the right direction. It amounts to stating, 'You must take the military option off the table, so we can continue watching them do what we were supposed to stop them from doing.'
The UN, through the IAEA, is doing just what people so often complain that it does: pursuing the continuation of negotiations as if it were the chief good to be achieved; sacrificing the actual good that was desired in favor of that continuation.
Again, I would love to see a diplomatic solution to this matter. But this mechanism is not producing it. We need a better way of approaching these matters than the UN system, which is once again engaged in a spectacular failure.
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