Mohammed ElBaradei and Hans Blix – the current and the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency – may yet have critical roles to play in Iraq.
In the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, Blix discovered that Saddam Hussein had been attempting to produce weapons-grade fissile material, in flagrant violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The Security Council promptly imposed sanctions on Iraq. They were to be lifted, once U.N. inspectors could report that Iraq’s illicit chem-bio weapons and nuke-related facilities had been destroyed, and that a U.N. monitoring and verification system was in place to ensure those facilities were never rebuilt.
By mid-1998, the majority of the members of the Security Council – including Russia, China and France – believed those conditions had been met and that the U.N. sanctions ought to be lifted.
However, President Clinton’s objective was to remove Saddam, not disarm him. So, Clinton warned U.N. inspectors to leave Iraq, lest they fall victim to a US cruise missile.
Four years later, at President Bush’s insistence, the Security Council required Saddam to re-admit those U.N. inspectors or face “serious consequences.”
Saddam did admit them, and, on March 7, ElBaradei reported to the Security Council that “after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.”
Hans Blix, now the chairman of the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Commission, made a similar report. Blix expected to be able to recommend within a matter of “months, not years” whether sanctions could be lifted.
Well, that wouldn’t do at all. President Bush’s covert objective was to remove Saddam, not disarm him. So, on March 17, he warned U.N. inspectors to leave Iraq, lest they fall victim to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
That operation is not yet over, and Saddam may still be alive. But, a month after vigorously opposing it, we have just asked the Security Council to lift the sanctions!
You see, Iraq has huge oil and natural gas reserves – second only to those of Saudi Arabia. But, recently, Iraq production has amounted to only 3 percent of the world’s total. We want to produce Iraqi oil at a much higher rate to cover the US and Brit costs of the invasion – currently estimated at about $20 billion – plus the cost of repairing the damage we inflicted on Iraq.
But there’s a small problem.
In 1995, acting under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, the Security Council established the Oil-for-Food Program. It is administered by the Office of Iraq Program, which not only exclusively markets Iraqi oil, but serves as “paymaster” for Iraqi imports of goods and services.
Oil-for-Food was intended to be a “temporary measure to provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, until the fulfillment by Iraq of the relevant Security Council resolutions,” most notably those requiring Iraq to rid itself of nuke and chem-bio weapons programs.
A month ago, our overt rationale for not removing the sanctions – indeed our overt rationale for the invasion of Iraq – was that Saddam still had hundreds of tons of nerve gas and large stocks of anthrax, as well as Scud ballistic missiles, none of which Blix could find. And a nuke program that ElBaradei couldn’t find.
For four months the warhawks and their media sycophants vilified Blix and ElBaradei, accusing them of incompetence – and worse – for not finding the weapons “defectors” said were there. They were even accused of “defending” Saddam Hussein.
So, now that we’ve conquered Iraq, we are faced with a dilemma.
We would like to convince the world that we were right and that Blix and ElBaradei were wrong. To that end, we have assembled a team of “experts,” which are conducting a frantic search of Iraq that is expected to take a year or two to complete.
But, we’d also like the sanctions lifted. Until they are, the Office of Iraq Program will continue to market Iraq’s oil.
Because the warhawks have so vilified Russia and France for opposing the war, the sanctions may not be removed no matter what U.S. “experts” don’t find.
But, if the warhawks ate “crow,” if Blix and ElBaradei were given the “months, not years” they asked for, and if they eventually reported to the Security Council the “fulfillment by Iraq of the relevant Security Council resolutions,” then maybe, maybe, the sanctions could be lifted.
Iraq has a lot of oil.
