By the end of the meeting, Sharon had made a commitment, in the context of the Israeli-Arab peace process, to be ready to talk about the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East. This was the first time an Israeli official had ever made such a statement. On previous occasions, the Israelis had repeated their position that any talks about a NWFZ would take place only after a comprehensive peace agreement. Israel had hardened its stance on nuclear discussions during the multilateral talks that began in Madrid in 1991. As a result, Egypt and the other Arab countries had decided to suspend all multilateral discussions, including arms control, resulting in the ultimate collapse of the Madrid process. Sharon’s shift in position, I believe, signaled an awareness of the growing anger and radicalization in the Arab world and of the prospects of an extremist group acquiring a nuclear weapon, and perhaps was an effort to show some flexibility on Israel’s part. More important, it was also prompted by growing fear of the Iranian nuclear program.
At the end of the meeting, Sharon said, “I heard you like jazz.” Smiling, he handed me a small gift, a CD by an Israeli group.
Some of those present at the meeting later tried to tone down what Sharon had told me. I assured them that I had heard clearly and that I would report to the IAEA Board what he had said.
My trip drew heavy criticism in the Egyptian and other Arab media because my agenda had not included inspection of Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility. I found myself accused of succumbing to U.S. influence. As the Arab media well knew, the IAEA had no authority to carry out such an inspection. They must have known that I had gone to Israel at the specific request of Agency Member States, including the Arab States. These facts were ignored in the Arab media, which in turn misled Arab public opinion. In any case, for the common person, legal nuances were trumped by the glaring reality of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Although that arsenal was a source of great apprehension to Israel’s neighbors as a glaring regional security imbalance, the international community chose to turn a blind eye; yet it had gone to war in Iraq over fictional WMD claims and was sanctioning Iran for even attempting to acquire advanced nuclear technology. To the Arab Muslim world, the treatment of Israel’s nuclear program constituted a staggering double standard, explainable only as an arbitrary distinction between “good guys” and “bad guys.”
For some years I had argued that the international community should adopt a new approach in dealing with Israel, India, and Pakistan—the three countries that had never joined the NPT—and engage them as nuclear partners rather than pariahs. They had not violated any agreement by going nuclear. But more important, no arms control negotiations, I felt, could make headway without the participation of all the states possessing nuclear weapons. A nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East, for example, could not be achieved without the engagement of Israel.
In 2006, in keeping with this pragmatic approach, I endorsed the agreement between India and the United States for the two countries to pursue civil nuclear cooperation—meaning nuclear power reactor technology, nuclear safety practices, and other peaceful nuclear applications. For this I drew the ire of U.S. experts and former government officials who had been working in the field of nuclear arms control for many years and who generally were very supportive when I spoke out on disarmament issues. Now they were enraged, charging me with “undermining the NPT” and “taking the side of the Bush administration.” They were joined in their criticism by a few officials from other governments.
The history of India’s nuclear weapon program was unique. J. N. Dixit, India’s late national security adviser, told me that in the early 1960s, before the NPT was finalized, U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk encouraged Prime Minister Nehru to lead India’s development of a nuclear weapon. This reflected the U.S. desire for India to balance the emergence of China as a nuclear-weapon state.
Nehru had refused: India would remain an outspoken advocate of nuclear disarmament. But mindful of its perceived regional security risks, India also declined to join the NPT, thus retaining the nuclear weapons option as a future possibility.
Ten years after Nehru’s death, India demonstrated, with its “peaceful nuclear explosion” in 1974—code-named Smiling Buddha—that it had mastered the technology. But India continued to exercise restraint. In 1988, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi submitted to the UN General Assembly an “Action Plan Ushering in a Nuclear-Weapon Free and Non-Violent World Order.” Only after decades of watching China grow in power and prestige as a nuclear-weapon state, with every technology made available, while India was treated with benign neglect, subject to export restrictions on sensitive technologies, did the Indian government decide to go nuclear. A series of nuclear weapon tests were conducted in 1998, and India declared itself a nuclear-weapon state.
The deal initiated by Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. president George Bush in 2005 acknowledged a practical reality: India had long been a possessor of nuclear weapons, and an ongoing refusal by the United States to cooperate on peaceful nuclear technology would have no effect on Delhi’s ability to maintain its nuclear arsenal. It would only hamper India’s efforts to expand its nuclear power program, part of its strategy to generate the energy needed to lift 650 million people out of poverty. Moreover, the Americans’ close cooperation with India in every technology area other than nuclear—a policy pursued by many other countries—was neither coherent nor consistent.
I viewed the agreement as a win-win situation, good for development and good for arms control. It would provide India with access to Western nuclear energy technology and safety insights—an important consideration given India’s ambitious indigenous nuclear energy program. Also, although the deal would not bring India into the NPT, it would draw the country closer to the nuclear nonproliferation regime through acceptance of IAEA safeguards on its civilian facilities and a commitment to adhere to the export guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.[6] This would be an important step toward addressing the lacunae in the export control regime, such as that evidenced by the international community’s experience with A. Q. Khan and his collaborators.
During my meeting with President Bush in March 2004, I had mentioned the inadequacies of export controls as a top proliferation concern. I urged him to talk to both India and Pakistan on this topic—to find a way to bring them into the export control regime, at a minimum, but more generally to make them partners in the effort to control proliferation.
In June 2006, I wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post, “Rethinking Nuclear Safeguards,” in which I articulated my reasons for supporting the U.S.-India deal. “Either we begin finding creative, outside-the-box solutions,” I wrote, “or the international nuclear safeguards regime will become obsolete.” The article did not make everyone happy. “An Open Letter to Mohamed ElBaradei,” published in Arms Control Today on July 24, was signed by many of my friends and supporters, who disagreed strongly with my position. They knew that my endorsement of the agreement with India would boost support for it in the U.S. Congress, where many representatives were undecided.
The Bush administration did in fact make full use of my endorsement. On a number of occasions, Condoleezza Rice took pains to point out that “the agreement has the support of Mohamed ElBaradei, the ‘custodian’ of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.” This was immensely ironic: whenever I talked publicly about the importance of nuclear disarmament or emphasized the need for direct U.S. engagement with Iran, the Americans castigated me, in the press and in diplomatic circles, for exceeding my mandate. Yet, in this case they were quite happy for me to take a clear policy position.
6
The NSG, founded in 1974, is a multinational body made up of forty-six Member States that have the capacity to export nuclear technology. The NSG seeks to reduce nuclear proliferation risks by controlling the export of materials that could be relevant to nuclear weapons development.