Sunday, July 4, 2004
El Baradei is at it again. You can't get action you can trust out of Iran, so who does he start hounding...?
Boston.com / News / World / Europe / UN looks to Israel for nuclear disarmament
The three-day visit, which begins Tuesday, follows a series of reports about nuclear activity involving Iran and Libya. It also follows calls for a tightening of the system of global controls preventing the spread of atomic arms.
With political tension on the rise in the Middle East, and with a burgeoning global black market that allows nations to acquire nuclear technology, ElBaradei has argued repeatedly that to avoid catastrophe, the nuclear option must be removed from the region.
And officials at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency say one key to such a development is Israel, which has not signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and which is the only state in the Middle East known to have a nuclear arsenal.
''As long as you continue to have countries dangling a cigarette from their mouth, you cannot tell everybody not to smoke with a high degree of credibility," Reuters quoted ElBaradei as telling reporters last Sunday in Moscow...
Israel smokes because they are surrounded by nations that want to destroy them. That tends to put one on edge and leads to horrible tobacco habit.
The ball for change in the region has never been in Israel's court. One country named in the article, Libya, has given up its WMD quest without regard to what Israel has done. The states in the region have maintained a war-stance (or just short of it) with Israel regardless of Israeli overtures. Who can possibly imagine that the terror-state of Iran would give up its quest for nuclear weapons should Israel dismantle hers? It belies credulity.
Iran needs to give up its quest for atomic weapons because it is a totalitarian terror-exporter. That has nothing to do with Israel or anywhere else.
This incident exposes one of the fundamental problems with the UN. UN agencies play this middle-ground area where everyone is treated neutrally. Iran and many other terror states are full members at the United Nations. That makes their perspective - their values - just as important and central as any liberal democratic nation's. To you and I, it seems self-evident that there is a difference between the US, Britain or Israel having nukes, and Iran, Syria, the former Iraq having them. It's common sense. It's a matter of responsibility, national goals and behavior. Sadly, at the UN, there is, quite literally, no "common sense."
It must treat Israel and the US are no better than Iran from its perspective. What other world-view could it possibly possess?
Iran is building nuclear weapons, not just to challenge Israel, but the United States and the West generally, as well. What evidence is there that disarming Israel would cause or make easier the task of disarming Iran? Iran is already not following the agreements it's already made. They are already playing a game of cheat and retreat with the "international community" unwilling to do anything more than wring its hands in response. This will change?
Nations seek nuclear weapons for a multiple of reasons. Because their neighbors have them is just one of them - because their neighbors have concentional forces that they can't contend with is another. The first would change if Israel disarmed. The second is never going to change.
Here's an idea: Perhaps the Arabs and Iranians should try a comprehensive, real, honest-to-goodness peace agreement first, then start asking the subject of their hatred to put their guns down.
