IAEA’s past assessments on Iran highly political: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Gareth Porter, an investigative journalist in Virginia, to discuss the approval of a resolution by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which brings to an end a 12-year investigation into the past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Well tell me about the significance of this day?

Porter: Well I think what this Board of Governors’ resolution does is to essentially complete the political steps necessary for the agreement between the P5+1 and Iran to go forward in terms of implementation.

It is clear that Iran was insisting that the IAEA had to effectively clear it of these past accusations that have remained in the books of the IAEA as a matter of investigation for years so that they could be able to say to the world we are now cleared of suspicion or accusations of having had nuclear weapons ambitions.

Now at the same time of course the IAEA itself was playing a very tricky role politically throughout this investigation and even in its final assessment one has to note that the language that it used over and over again was sort of implying strongly that it still had reason to suspect Iran without saying so directly. In other words this is a way, in my view, that the IAEA sort of defended itself, defended its past assessments which were highly political and not based on the actual evidence.

So essentially the IAEA was in a very tough political spot here, they were forced to agree essentially by the US government to write this assessment in a way that it would make it possible to stop the investigation and I knew that. So the wording is a very interesting mixture of meeting that requirement, at the same time that it sort of in a very tricky way avoided having to admit past errors.

Press TV: But what does it mean in general, when we have these international monitoring boards that really are not politically independent and whatever they are overseeing can actually be used as political tools to put pressure on various entities? What is the answer? What needs to be done in your perspective to change this status quo?

Porter: Well this institution, the International Atomic Energy Agency at one time did in fact take an independent position on the Iraq situation. Mohamed ElBaradei  was quite courageous in doing that at that particular moment in 2003 but in general the problem has been and still remains that the Board of Governors is dominated by the United States and its allies, a very tightly organized group called “the like-minded states” and they can essentially get the Board of Governors to take whatever position they want with certain limitations.

So this is an institution that must by its very nature claim to pursue a position that is in line with US interests and how to change that, I mean this is a matter of fundamental political power globally that the United States exerts through multiple United Nations institutions including of course the UN Security Council itself.

The ideal situation would be fundamental reform of the UN system but that is at this point, I am sorry to say, a very distant hope at best.

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