Our colleague John Carlson, the former head of the Australian Safeguards and Nonproliferation Office (ASNO), has joined the list of those burned by the Wikileaks cable dump.

Apparently John wrote a non-paper entitled, The Case Against ElBaradei, for the consideration by US diplomats planning a campaign against ElBaradei’s third term as IAEA Director-General. He provided it to the USG, the cable asserts, without clearing it through his own interagency process.  (I’ve always imagined the Australian interagency process as something out the Australian University of Australia skit: “Hello Bruce, it’s Bruce here.” “Hello Bruce.” “Say would you clear this non-paper, Bruce?” “Sure thing Bruce, no problem.”)

The full-text of Carlson’s non-paper is in the comments, since it is not protected by US classification.

AFP published portions of the cable under the headline “US, Australia schemed against IAEA chief: cable” — although I think “schemed” is a bit unfair.  Sure,  Carlson probably should have cleared the paper back home, but his arguments against ElBaradei were pretty widespread at the time. Carlson, like many others, believed that the IAEA DG was obligated to judge Iran in noncompliance, which likely would have led the Board to refer Iran’s case to the UN Security Council.  Carlson believed this was the most likely route to a  successful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue:

– If ElBaradei had shown leadership on the non-compliance issue by expressing the judgment that Iran’s conduct was non-compliance, the Board would have found it very hard to find otherwise. Instead, ElBaradei took the view this is a “political” decision, to be made by the Board. The effect was to turn a largely technical issue into a political one, politicizing the Board. This played nicely into the hands of Iran which had encouraged the formation of a NAM chapter in Vienna, to present a “NAM position” in the Board.

– ElBaradei’s reports to the Board appear to have been composed with the object of stalling a non-compliance finding. As well as avoiding the “N”-word, there were extraordinary statements like “there is no evidence that the … undeclared nuclear material and activities … were related to a nuclear weapons programme”, confusing the question of the standard of proof for a non-compliance finding.

– Iran’s success in avoiding a non-compliance finding has emboldened it to press on with the nuclear program. It seems likely the situation will end in confrontation through the Iranians’ failure to understand the strength of opposition to Iran becoming a nuclear power. Meanwhile, the handling of the non-compliance issue has seriously damaged the integrity and credibility of the IAEA’s processes. A change is needed in the IAEA leadership, to return the Agency to its technical function.

I don’t think pointing out that you believe a different DG would be better is “scheming” — it is simply, as the title suggests, making the case against ElBaradei’s judgment with regard to Iran. Consider a very similar “open memorandum” to ElBaradei that George Perkovich published in Foreign Policy:

Unfortunately, some of the agency’s recent work gives the appearance of political trimming. Your recent reports on Iran have neglected to mention by name countries that supplied Iran’s nuclear capabilities, such as China and Pakistan. Then there was the ill-advised political judgment in your November 2003 report on Iran in which you opined that there was “no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear activities and material” documented by agency investigators “was related to a nuclear weapon program.” That line was probably intended to keep Tehran from cutting off further inspections and withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

It may have been diplomatically shrewd, but it wasn’t a statement of fact. If you confine yourself to collecting and reporting facts with uncompromising vigor, leaving the interpretation to the Board of Governors, individual states, and the U.N. Security Council, you will minimize political controversy directed at the agency. As important, you will force member states and the Security Council to stop shirking their responsibilities for enforcement, as they did in 2002 when the agency reported North Korea’s treaty noncompliance, but the Security Council, including the United States, did nothing. If other states don’t like the way the United States pursues enforcement, they should do it themselves, not dump the hardest problems on the IAEA. And if China and Russia want to avoid having the Security Council authorize binding sanctions against states that break international rules, for fear their own behavior could be sanctionable someday, don’t let them create the impression that it is the IAEA that is weak. Make the facts so clear that coalitions of the willing must then resolve crises, as Britain, France, and Germany are attempting with Iran. Your courage in taking slings and arrows from all sides is admirable. But international security ultimately requires states to take the lead.

This view was really quite widespread in early 2005. Indeed, I think it remains the dominant view in the United States. (For a very tight and fair articulation of this view, which I happen to disagree with, I highly recommend Greg Schulte’s article Strengthening the IAEA: How the Nuclear  Watchdog Can Regain Its Bark.)

There are really two core arguments against ElBaradei.  One is procedural, relating to whether ElBaradei overstepped his authority by not immediately assessing Iran to be in noncompliance. The other is outcome-oriented, relating to whether a finding of noncompliance would have improved the chances for a deal.

The issue of whether ElBaradei overstepped his authority or not is, to my view, academic.  The Director-General is a political actor who, among other things, protects the equities of the agency.  Perhaps it would be better if the the DG simply reported facts to the board, but very few people complained when ElBaradei allowed p0litics to shield Egypt and South Korea from referral, despite evidence of noncompliance. (An admirable exception to this is Pierre Goldschmidt who has argued that the Board should acknowledge it was a mistake not to find Egypt and the ROK in noncompliance.) I have tended to excuse ElBaradei’s worst moments, at least during his first two terms, as the inevitable result of managing political forces that could destroy the IAEA. I certainly count that November 2003 sentence that rankles Carlson and Perkovich as one of the worst moments intended to placate the Iranians.  I go back-and-forth on the 2007 workplan, though I am basically for it.  There is an awful lot I don’t like about how ElBaradei handled his job, especially after the Nobel Prize, but at least some of the people arguing for an apolitical watchdog are really hoping for a Western lapdog.  I don’t put Carlson in that camp, though perhaps the description fits some of the folks who got his memo.

If we accept that the IAEA Direct0r-General will be attuned to politics, in particular placating the NAM, then we are left with a question of outcomes.  Was ElBaradei wrong?  Would referral to the Security Council in 2003 have improved the opportunity for a deal?

My judgment is that referral in 2003 would have ended the last, best chance for a deal, although the US and Europe missed the chance in any event.  We know that in precisely this same period, Iran’s response to international pressure was to “halt” (I prefer “pause”) the portions of its so-called “weaponization” effort (which, really, I think of as a kind of parallel program).  As I have argued elsewhere, this was the best time to make something stick.  ElBaradei, for all his faults, was probably right to press the Bush Administration to seize the moment.  I find it hard to believe that anyone in his position who believed he saw the window for a diplomatic solution closing could simply stay quiet.

With hindsight, we can say that Iran’s referral to the Security Council in February 2006 does not seem to have chastened Iran as might have been expected.  Iran, as ElBaradei predicted, simply resumed enrichment and suspended compliance with its Additional Protocol. Iran is now embarking on a very suspicious endeavor at Fordow and who knows where else.  Iran has not, as ElBaradei feared, withdrawn from the NPT, but that may be a matter of style as much as intent.  Salami slicing seems to be the strategy of the day.

I don’t think its fair to say that John Carlson was “scheming” against ElBaradei.  I do think, however, he was wrong about the best policy course, although even that is hardly clear.  There are at least plausible arguments to be made that more pressure might have made a difference in 2003 with Khatami than with Ahmadinejad in 2006 or that there was never any chance of a deal at all, making it more important to refuse to legitimize the Iran nuclear program.  On balance, though, it seems to me there was a opportunity, now probably passed, to negotiate something short of an Iranian nuclear deterrent.

Who is to blame for missing that opportunity?  It seems backwards to me to argue that ElBaradei’s diplomatic involvement somehow crowded out proper diplomatic efforts to head off an Iranian bomb or provided a convenient excuse to shirk responsibility.  On the contrary, I would argue that it was the absence of engagement by the United States — particularly in the pre-2007 timeframe — that left a vacuum for ElBaradei to fill.  ElBaradei’s involvement was a symptom of the dysfunction affecting negotiations with Iran, not the cause.

It’s the old story about pointing a finger, then counting the ones aimed  in the opposite direction.