FEATURE: Mohamed ElBaradei

by Paul Woodward on September 17, 2007

An indispensable irritant to Iran and its foes
By Elaine Sciolini and William J. Broad, New York Times, September 17, 2007

While Dr. ElBaradei’s harshest detractors describe him as drunk with the power of his Nobel, what keeps him on center stage is a pragmatic truth: He is everyone’s best hope.

He has grown ever more indispensable as American credibility on atomic intelligence has nose-dived and European diplomacy with Tehran has stalled.

For the world powers, he is far and away the best source of knowledge about Iran’s nuclear progress — information Washington uses regularly to portray Tehran as an imminent global danger.

Even the Iranians need him (as he likes to remind them) because his maneuvers promise to lessen and perhaps end the sting of United Nations sanctions.

Dr. ElBaradei, who is 65, seems unfazed, even energized, by all the dissent. He alludes to a sense of destiny that has pressed him into the role of world peacemaker. He has called those who advocate war against Iran “crazies,” and in two long recent interviews described himself as a “secular pope” whose mission is to “make sure, frankly, that we do not end up killing each other.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — In their reference to ElBaradei’s “mangled metaphors,” his “naive grandiosity,” and his being “drunk with the power of his Nobel,” (references all conveniently ascribed to others), these reporters betray a subtle contempt reserved for UN officials which we rarely find directed at even some of the most moronic buffoons who sit in Congress or have been presidentially appointed in the executive branch of government. If, as reported, ElBaradei is “everyone’s best hope,” the Times seems intent on doing its best to undercut that hope. And is that for nothing more than the reason that as an Arab, as a Middle Easterner, and as an unelected non-American official, Mohamed ElBaradei’s political authority cannot be acknowledged by the newspaper that treasures its privileged access to the seat of American power?

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