From Yahoo News/Reuters:
Foreign Policy: Nuclear Inspectors Have Snazzy New Tools to Catch Iran Cheating
The catch: Iran gets to approve which ones the IAEA can use.
On the heels of Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency returned to Baghdad with a mandate from the U.N. Security Council to find and destroy the country’s illicit nuclear weapons program. What they found astonished them: Left unchecked, Iraq had hoped to have a bomb by the end of the year.
IAEA inspectors had frequently visited Iraq throughout the 1980s, touring the country’s nuclear facilities and checking to see whether Baghdad’s declarations to the Vienna-based agency were complete. While some within the agency harbored suspicions about Iraq’s intentions, the IAEA failed to grasp the true extent of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program. Iraq used a campaign of deceit and deception to clandestinely acquire the tools, materials, and knowledge necessary to construct a nuclear weapon. At the same time, IAEA officials were invited for carefully choreographed visits to sites such as the Tuwaitha research facility, a center for the weapons program. The officials left thinking that Iraq was far from attaining a bomb — a serious miscalculation that wasn’t corrected until after the first Gulf War.
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WNU Editor: So much for clear and open inspections.
