North Korea Waves Its Nuclear Weapons in the Air and Threatens to Launch Them Preemptively Against US and SK, While Amano Stresses the Importance of Visiting Iranian Sites that May or May Not Have Had Something to do With Experiments that Might or Might Not have been Related to Nuclear Weapons Research Twenty Years Ago
Posted: March 7, 2013 Filed under: Nuclear 11 CommentsUPDATE: A friend just passed along to me the fact that North Korea still has in force with the IAEA an INFCIRC/66, facilities specific agreement, covering its IRT-2000 research reactor. I honestly wasn’t aware of this. And it does appear to be correct that, unlike NK’s INFCIRC/153 CSA, the INFCIRC/66 agreement did not expire when NK withdrew from the NPT. INFCIRC/66 agreement templates pre-date the NPT, so don’t have a clause terminating the agreement upon withdrawal from the NPT as the INFCIRC/153 template does. So it would appear that the IAEA still has this safeguards agreement in force with NK.
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Could there be a clearer sign of how politicized, biased and out of touch with the reality of nuclear weapons proliferation concerns the IAEA is under Amano, than these two stories (here and here) coming out on the same day?
Let’s start a signature petition to ask Hans Blix to challenge Amano for the DG-ship at the General meeting in September. I want my name to be first on the list!!!
Arms Control Law 
Didn’t it take a couple of votes to get Amano in the first time? IIRC reading it took US pressure on the IAEA Board to get him in. The very existence of the Wikileaks cables on him should have been sufficient to get him booted out.
That said, frankly no one really cares about North Korea’s nukes because a) they’re likely duds, and b) North Korea’s threats are so boring and unbelievable no one bothers to listen to them. There’s no way they can threaten the US with nukes and everyone knows it.
And of course, they don’t have any oil or any influence on anyone else in their region. The entire country is merely a nuisance to everyone.
The IAEA exists now solely for the purpose of being used to flog Iran for regional hegemony reasons. It has completely discredited itself in the eyes of the NAM nations. The entire NPT might as well be retired at this point. Once the Iran war starts, that will be the end of it.
A lot of people think Iran should withdraw from the NPT now. I don’t agree because why hand any more propaganda talking points to your enemies than you have to? But when the US attacks Iran, they might as well withdraw at that point. I suspect they actually won’t, however, regardless of the attack.
I’m also completely convinced that even when the US attacks Iran, they won’t attempt to build nukes, first because they won’t be able to in a hot war, and second because they couldn’t use them if they did manage to build a few.
There’s also the point that Iran is allowing itself to be browbeaten by the West whereas North Korea doesn’t. 🙂
Frankly, I’d like to see Iran simply tell the West to “f***-off” and refuse to even talk to the West any more about its nuclear program. Just declare their program peaceful and declare they’re not going to discuss it any more with anyone.
As is said in Federal prison: “I hope you don’t like it. Now what are you going to do about it?” 🙂
Granted, this violates my “no handing propaganda points to the enemy” rule. But there comes a time when you have to treat the enemy as your enemy. As ex-SEAL Richard Marcinko says, quoting ancient Chinese strategists, “Treat the enemy as your enemy, because he will invariably treat you that way.” Which is exactly what the West is doing to Iran.
You and I might do that but Iran is playing a wiser game. They’ve been leading the US by the nose for years now, and the situation is under control. We shouldn’t argue with success. Iran came up with the Asia-Pacific pivot before the US did!
Staying in the NPT is particularly wise because it gives Iran hostages against any surprise attack.
Dan — I had posted this before but since you mention Blix here, I think everyone should read this:
Here is a Bloomberg story that is clients-only (no URL yet):
Iran Spy Data Need Checks as Amano Prepares New Term, Blix Says
2013-03-07 11:09:53.179 GMT
By Jonathan Tirone
March 7 (Bloomberg) — Intelligence information given to
United Nations monitors showing possible military dimensions to
Iran’s nuclear work should be double-checked, said Hans Blix,
the former director-general of the UN atomic group.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors
yesterday endorsed its current leader, Japan’s Yukiya Amano, for
a second four-year term. The appointment, which needs
ratification by the agency’s full membership in September, may
shape the way Iran’s decade-long investigation is carried out.
“The IAEA must not be the prolonged arm of intelligence
agencies,” Blix said in a March 4 interview in Dubai. “I don’t
think you can possibly have a decent relationship with the
country you inspect if they see that the inspectors contain
people that come from intelligence or maybe even collect
information about suitable targets.”
The Vienna-based IAEA is pressing Iran to give greater
access to people, places and documents to clear up allegations
of atomic-bomb work made by anonymous intelligence agencies.
While the IAEA calls the information “credible,” the Islamic
Republic says inspectors are using forged documents to raise
international pressure against a peaceful nuclear program.
“We have to work on the Iran nuclear issues,” Amano said
at a briefing in the Austrian capital late yesterday. “I need
cooperation from Iran, and through this cooperation I have to
produce concrete results. That is the way to ensure a peaceful
solution.”
No Blank Check
Iran, whose nuclear scientists have been targets of
assassinations and whose infrastructure has been subject to
sabotage, says that while it’s willing to work with monitors, it
won’t do so at the expense of national security.
“We are committed to continue our dialogue with the
IAEA,” Iran’s agency envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh told reporters
yesterday in Vienna. “At the same time, we cannot write a blank
check because of our national security. No country would give a
blank check. There should be a criteria, a framework.”
Soltanieh criticized Amano for elevating concern over his
country’s atomic work by publicizing intelligence information
that hasn’t been authenticated. Amano’s decision to publish
unsourced intelligence, a break in policy from his predecessor,
Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, drew U.S. praise.
A February 2010 U.S. State Department cable called Amano’s
first Iran report “sharper in tone” than those produced by
ElBaradei, adding that the document “creates a positive
precedent for how he intends to run safeguards investigations.”
Data Exaggerated?
“Also, unlike in the previous director-general’s reports,
the IAEA does not mention the need for member states to provide
original documentation to Iran,” according to the cable. Citing
U.S. government policy, a State Department spokeswoman declined
to comment.
The IAEA subsequently released an overview of the
intelligence it called credible in a November 2011 report.
ElBaradei wrote in his 2011 biography, “The Age of Deception”
(Metropolitan Books), that the IAEA didn’t make the information
public during his tenure because it couldn’t be authenticated.
“It may be that they are exaggerating it,” Blix said,
referring to the intelligence shared with the IAEA. “There’s
also a danger in telling us without revealing the actual
sources. One has to be very careful about that.”
Blix, who led the IAEA for 16 years until 1997 and was in
charge of the UN’s Iraq nuclear-monitoring and verification
group from 2000 to 2003, called the IAEA’s focus on the Parchin
military complex a “sideshow.” Even if the alleged blast
chamber was found at the site, “it doesn’t take us much
further” in terms of measuring Iranian intentions.
The Persian Gulf country is “ready to cooperate with the
agency and the director-general, but we hope the course of
action will be changed,” Soltanieh said. “These reports
provoke member states. They should be purely technical.”
For Related News and Information:
Top Stories: TOP
Iran nuclear tensions: STNI IRANTENS
Top oil news: OTOP
–With assistance from Andrew J. Barden in Dubai. Editors:
Jennifer M. Freedman, Francis Harris
To contact the reporter on this story:
Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at +43-1-513-266-025 or
jtirone@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
James Hertling at +33-1-5365-5075 or
jhertling@bloomberg.net
Do reporters not get embarrassed writing stuff like: “Iran’s suspected pursuit of a nuclear arms capacity…” ?
So Amano will pursue Iran because Iran is using dual-use nuclear technology under safeguards?
Excatly! The way such “weasel wording” has become accepted in the media is laughable. They say it with a straight face!
Or when they speak (with a straight face) of countering Iran’s “ambitions” and “intentions?” And these are grown people. At least physically.
I’m beginning to understand how uncomfortable NK must have felt when they read this:
“First, we seek to bolster the nuclear non-proliferation regime and its centerpiece, the NPT, by reversing the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, strengthening International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and enforcing compliance with them, impeding illicit nuclear trade, and promoting the peaceful uses of nuclear energy without increasing proliferation risks.”
…
“To that end, the United States is now prepared to strengthen its long-standing “negative security assurance” by declaring that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.”
Click to access 2010%20nuclear%20posture%20review%20report.pdf
A brief BBC interview with Blix:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21597732
I don’t understand how IAEA still has a safeguards agreement in force with NK concerning Yongbyon when the IAEA was (in effect) thrown out of the country nearly four years ago.
From an IAEA fact sheet:
September 2008. IAEA Removes Seals from Plant in Yongbyon. In September 2008, IAEA Director General ElBaradei reported to the Board that DPRK had asked the IAEA to remove seals and surveillance from the reprocessing plant in Yongbyon. The work was subsequently done, after which no more IAEA seals and surveillance equipment were in place at the reprocessing facility. The DPRK stated that IAEA inspectors would have no further access to the reprocessing plant.
April 2009. IAEA Inspectors Depart. IAEA inspectors at the Yongbyon nuclear facilities removed safeguards equipement and left the country on 16 April 2009, following the DPRK decision to cease all cooperation with the IAEA.
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iaeadprk/fact_sheet_may2003.shtml
Ignore Threat of North Korean Nukes. Obsess Over Threat of Imaginary Iranian Nukes.
John Glaser, March 08, 2013
http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/03/08/ignore-threat-of-north-korean-nukes-obsess-over-threat-of-imaginary-iranian-nukes/