Since 1985 I have spent two years and four months of my life in Vienna—not bad if you consider that I never have owned or rented a flat there. I’m right now halfway through another Vienna stay with one week down, and one week to go.

A lot of those two-plus years went by in corridors of the A and B buildings at the Vienna International Center where the IAEA has its headquarters. That was also true last week, but before we get to what happened there, I need to pay my bill here and I’ll point out that if you happen to be in the Museum Quarter or anywhere in the vicinity of the Mariahilferstrasse in the sixth district, nothing can beat a double espresso in this place, with a slice of fresh, warm plum torte and a whiff of the odd Montecristo in the air. If you arrive later, there’s a quite respectable Milano-style cocktail bar upstairs. It looks a little like a modern version of La Dolce Vita, and your waiter will remind you a little of the chauffeur in the black suit who shoots Dominique Sanda in Il Conformista, but that’s just part of the atmosphere—so no worries.

But I didn’t come to Vienna for the coffee, and so after five days of IAEA board deliberations beginning 9/13, and one more week to go at this year’s General Conference, here’s the essential thumbnail at half-time:

  • Amano’s deliberate post-election courtship with the NAM doesn’t look like it is paying off.
  • Bush and ElBaradei are both history, but as of the end of this week, NAM-Western Group atmospherics at the IAEA haven’t improved under Obama.
  • Amano’s September IAEA report on Iran was much tougher than it looked at first glance and was given credit for, as specific objections raised by Iran and the NAM clearly bore out last week.
  • The NAM and the Arab group tabled their fateful copycat resolution (from 2009) on Israel’s nuclear capabilities to the IAEA General Conference next week.
  • Board antics underscored that an IAEA special inspection request to Syria is off the table for Amano.
  • The US and Western group are between a rock (the Arabs/ NAM) and a hard place (Israel) if they want to prepare an alternative GC resolution this week to the NAM on Israel one drafted in July.  The P-5’s commitment to holding a Middle East disarmament conference in 2012 has put them there.

Prologue

Disputations between the Western Group and the NAM in quarterly IAEA board meetings and the annual General Conference have been a matter of course in recent years but this fall we have the added feature of the Final Document from the May 2010 NPT Revcon, and specifically NPT/conf.2012/L.2 and IV 7 (a-e).

That spells out that in 2012 the nuclear weapon states would convene a Middle East NWFZ conference with Israel and other states in the region. This conference would be held “on the basis or arrangements freely arrived at by the states of the region” – so if Israel doesn’t want to attend it, it doesn’t have to attend it. But in practical terms—as we saw unfolding at the IAEA last week—the Revcon Final Document implied that the US and the other P-5 states committed themselves to bring Israel to the table in 2012.

The IAEA 2010 GC began on Monday, 9/20. For the rest of this week, the P-5 commitment to hold the conference in 2012 will be at issue, because one year ago, at the 2009 GC, for the first time in a long time the Arabs and the NAM succeeded in passing a resolution at the IAEA General Conference which  urged Israel to join the NPT and put all its nuclear activities under IAEA safeguards. The Israel resolution was accompanied by a separate resolution calling on the IAEA to support establishment of a NWFZ in the Middle East. The US, which routinely and strongly intervenes  at IAEA GCs to head off resolutions on Israel, was not able to prevent these 2009 items from passing. That set the ball in motion toward the NAM’s goal of getting the US and other Western states at the NPT Revcon to agree to the 2012 conference.

Shortly after the NPT Revcon, the NAM quietly prepared a new resolution on Israel. The text of the resolution is more or less the same as the resolution which the GC passed in 2009, with the added point (d): “recalling…the 2010 NPT Revcon, which reaffirmed the importance of Israel’s accession to the NPT and the placement of all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards for realizing the universality of the NPT in the Middle East”

Last Friday the Arabs tabled this resolution as was pointed out by Fred Dahl and Sylvia Westall this morning.  As they explained, tabling it will make it difficult to stop, since all of its sponsors would have to agree to withdraw it.  But the US and its allies in the GC will try to get the resolution stopped, replaced, or postponed.

Passion Play

This third of four annual quarterly board meetings last week was a curtain raiser to the GC (one ambassador told me it was a “passion play”) convening in Boardroom A in the M Building inside IAEA HQ on 9/13. Monday and Tuesday were spent on less-controversial items which had to be dealt with to get them onto the agenda of the GC the week thereafter. But Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were spent on the rest of the agenda—Iran, Syria, Israel, the Middle East—and it didn’t take long for bloodletting to begin.

On Wednesday, Iran and vocal NAM states in the board launched an all-out assault on Amano’s latest IAEA report on Iran. Iran’s IAEA Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh began the session by calling for an IAEA investigation of Japan’s nuclear fuel cycle activities—Japan’s Rokkashomura site of course being emblematic of enrichment programs of other NPT states not subject to probing by the IAEA—and pointing out the “existence of stockpiles of tons of plutonium and low and high-enriched uranium of Japan… I hereby request the Director General to report on the exact quantity and location of stockpiles of such materials having high proliferation risk, as well as the details of implementation of safeguards in Japan to the next meeting of the board of governors.”

Now, no one in the meeting concluded that Iran’s call on Amano to investigate Japan would result in the Department of Safeguards mounting an assault on Japan’s centrifuge program or scaling its plutonium mountain, but it was strong enough to provoke a stiff response during the meeting from Japan’s sanguine IAEA governor, who said that the IAEA was confident that all of Japan’s nuclear fuel cycle activities were for peaceful use, and that Japan—unlike Iran—is implementing an Additional Protocol. Iran, he said, would be well advised to instead concentrate on the application of safeguards in Iran. Wow.

That little interchange was just the beginning.

On Wednesday afternoon Soltanieh then challenged and attacked Amano on point after point in the September Iran report. Amano, and Herman Nackaerts, who shortly will be confirmed to succeed Olli Heinonen as head of IAEA safeguards, responded to each point during the standoff.

I don’t want to go into the nitty gritty gory details but suffice it to say that the following issues were raised in the board meeting by Amano’s critics in the NAM:

  • Amano’s decision to cite in the Iran report UNSCR 1929 passed this summer. NAM delegates said that previous IAEA reports did not reference UNSC resolutions, which Iran alleges are illegal.   Delegates said Amano replied that the citations from UNSCR 1929 were a useful point of reference for readers of the report.
  • Iran demanded from Amano an accounting of security measures taken by the IAEA to assure that safeguards information on Iran was not disclosed to the public and the media. We can expect some blood, sweat, and tears over this item in 2011, because there appears to be an unholy alliance brewing between Iran and the NAM—who assert that the IAEA is providing confidential details about Iran’s nuclear program to the outside world in the DG’s reports—and advanced nuclear countries, which claim that the IAEA isn’t protecting their information when the IAEA hires external consultants.
  • Iran and its allies went on the warpath over the IAEA’s objections that Iran had prevented the designation of IAEA inspectors in two recent cases. The IAEA takes the position that over the long haul Iran has a track record of barring the most experienced inspectors.
  • There was a certain amount of mudslinging in Amano’s direction concerning the unresolved issue of allegations that Iran has engaged in military nuclear activities. I could write a chapter worthy of Charles Dickens about what happened in there, but it will be enough for now to simply underline that Iran and the IAEA don’t agree that information provided by Iran puts these allegations to rest.
  • Iran and the IAEA also continue to differ over the issue of alleged pyroprocessing activities by Iran, and over efforts by Iran to compel IAEA inspectors to sign written statements before they leave the country.

On several occasions on Wednesday and Thursday, Iran objected repeatedly to the IAEA having singled out Iran and specifically for “departing from normal verification language” in the reports on Iran, referring to citation of the UNSCR and in calling on Iran to implement measures which follow from the Additional Protocol which is voluntary and, according to Iran, not a requirement for Iran.  Soltanieh: “[Amano] is expected only to report on the inspections made in Iran. Neither [is] the Agency a subordinate of the UN or UNSC, nor is Mr Amano under the Secretary General of the UN. Iran and the majority of member states do not permit the UNSC to dictate to the IAEA and [Amano] what to do, how, and when.” That kind of language—reiterated in Iran’s formal statement distributed after his remarks in the boardroom—is not routine during board conclaves.

IAEA officials on occasion of criticism in the boardroom pointed out more than once last week that the IAEA board has cited Iran over and over again for repeated breaches of its safeguards agreement, a fact which has shattered confidence that Iran’s nuclear activities are all accounted for; that Iran is out of compliance with UNSCRs;  that Iran has unilaterally suspended implementation of the Additional Protocol and, finally, that Iran has refused to even discuss the allegations of possible military nuclear activities. That was that for Wednesday, more or less.

On Thursday and into Friday, the war of words continued on Syria and Middle East issues, with Arab Group and NAM states accusing Amano and the IAEA secretariat of trying to deceive them concerning the latitude which the IAEA’s statute provides Amano in reporting to the board on Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

A polite version of comments by the NAM, distributed to the media last week, regretted that Amano had taken the position that the IAEA was “not in a position to provide” any information on nuclear installations or activities in Israel beyond those which are safeguarded an Infcirc-66 agreement between Israel and the IAEA. Inside the boardroom, however, Amano was attacked by NAM states for having failed to make any serious effort to comply with the 2009 GC resolution on Israel. Some speakers asserted that Amano’s predecessor, Mohammad ElBaradei, had done more in this regard. Iran referred to Amano’s report as “short, unpalatable, and biased” and assaulted Amano for “disregarding” the mandate provided him by the 2009 GC during Amano’s trip to Israel last month. A list of NAM states upbraided Amano for failing to report in detail on non-declared nuclear activities by Israel, and the IAEA responded by pointing out that because Israel does not have a CSA with the IAEA, the IAEA has no access to information about such activities.

After concluding the war of words on Iran, the board moved to Syria. A few pithy statements were made—in particular one by Belgium—about the lack of Syrian willingness to cooperate with the IAEA to arrive at a “managed access” solution to permit IAEA inspectors to view sites proposed by the US as possible hosting evidence of clandestine nuclear activity by Syria. The Syrian response was firm: no cooperation on managed access, on account of Syria’s objections that any access would compromise the country’s national security. That, with the exception of an impassioned plea by Sudan, on behalf of the Arab Group, to take Syria at its word, was the end of the discussion about Syria’s nuclear program.  As I had suggested on the eve of the board meeting elsewhere a request for a special inspection in Syria, or a resolution to that effect by the board, would be a non-starter, and with Sudan in there slugging it out on Syria’s behalf, it was.

During the latter half of the week, some Arab Group states reiterated urgings made in letters to Amano, that Israel’s access to IAEA technical cooperation be cut off. Toward the very end of all this, Australia intervened to voice distress at the high-pitched accusations which had punctuated the meeting since Wednesday, and they basically told aggressive parties—diplomats thereafter said that Egypt, Cuba, Venezuela, Sudan, Syria, and Iran were meant—to cool it. South Africa objected that back in 2003, on occasion of the Iraq war, the boardroom got pretty feisty, but that was a long while ago, and the conventional wisdom just last year was that Obama’s election and ElBaradei’s departure would heal things. That prediction turned out to be misinformed.

Next Moves

On to the annual GC which began yesterday, 9/20.  For many nonproliferators, this is normally a ho-hum affair.  Not this time.

That was clear right off the bat a week ago, when White House WMD czar Gary Samore arrived on the scene at the IAEA board meeting for two and a half days of meetings including one with the Arab Group during which he urged them not to table an Israel resolution at the GC  the following week. The same message was delivered to the board and then to the press by US Ambassador Glyn Davies. Davies reiterated talking points which US officials had developed in part during bilateral discussions with Israel in recent months and which were summarized in Clinton’s terse reply to Amano’s April solicitation to member states about the Middle East NWFZ arising from the 2009 GC resolution.

Samore’s presence in Vienna last week was meant to underscore to the Arab Group that Obama is committed to making the 2012 conference happen. But it also suggested that the White House has got to be worried that, unless the US successfully negotiated with the NAM/Arab Group to either avert them from launching and passing an Israel resolution at next week’s GC, or else gets a majority of the IAEA’s 151 member states to back an alternative resolution, its game plan for the Middle East could unravel. At the GC the US will want to steer a middle course between the NAM/Arab Group, on the one hand, and Israel, on the other. In addition to warning that an Arab GC resolution would endanger the 2012 conference, Samore and Davies also made the less-cogent argument that launching an Israel resolution at the GC would damage prospects for current Middle East peace talks (That might in an abstract sense be true, but because the peace talks are already beset with the massive local issues including Israeli settlements, what happens at the GC this week will pale in significance.) While US officials have suggested in their statements that Washington’s best-case outcome would be no Arab/NAM resolution at all, the board meeting has bubbled over with some rumors that some of America’s allies were tinkering with the text for an alternative, compromise resolution which might appease NAM and some Arab states (The UAE, America’s nuclear cooperation partner of choice in the Middle East, signed the Israel resolution) and find a majority by coming Friday. Whether that flies, however, will depend on whether Israel will play along. If Israel runs to the US for cover should EU states or others launch a compromise text, bets this gambit will succeed may be off. Maybe a more likely strategy for the US will be a drive (in which the Philippines may be involved) to get the Arabs to put off the resolution for at least a year and at best, after the conference in 2012.

The US has made clear that it is committed to making the 2012 event happen and to getting Israel to attend it. Obama will still be president when the date arrives. But the US, and the rest of the P-5 have not made any commitments for anything that transpires during or after the conference.