I was to see yet one more erratic shift in the Iranian story, this time on a trip to France to meet with President Sarkozy, Foreign Minister Kouchner, and other French officials. A Western foreign minister had said that, in his view, French foreign policy had become “crazy.” I had heard similar thoughts through other diplomatic back channels: the French were getting on the Europeans’ nerves.
Sarkozy showed up to the meeting without a jacket and immediately ordered coffee for himself. After a while he looked at me and asked if I wanted coffee. No one else present was offered anything—a peculiar contrast to my meeting a few years earlier with Chirac, and to the formality generally associated with the Elysée.
Sarkozy jumped right in, scoldingly aggressive. “Mr. ElBaradei,” he intoned, “I’m a friend of the U.S. and Israel.”
I was tempted to say, “So what?” but I held my tongue.
“I want to tell you how I feel,” he went on. He underscored the “mortal danger” of Iran’s program. The Iranians, he said, were using me and the Agency. His fear was that the Americans or the Israelis would bomb Iran. As he was making his case, his cell phone began vibrating. He stepped out to take the call. I saw the subtle looks of disapproval around the table. Sarkozy returned and picked up where he had left off.
At last he paused. I saw no point in holding back. “Mr. Sarkozy,” I told him, “you need to understand how poorly the West has mismanaged the Iranian file. When Iran was already suspending its enrichment program, all it got in return was an offer made of hot air. That was largely because of the French. Your countrymen were too afraid of opposition by the Americans to promise Iran Western nuclear power technology. That was the critical element that made the Iranians feel they were being taken for a ride. And that is how this series of diplomatic failures began.”
After that disillusioning experience, I told him, the Iranians had decided to make uranium conversion, and subsequently uranium enrichment, a fait accompli. I explained that enrichment, for Iran, was an insurance policy. It did not mean, necessarily, that they were going for a weapon. But by adding more sanctions, the West was provoking certain retaliation by Iran, which would lead to continuous escalation.
I, too, feared the worst. “What do you think the effect would be across the entire Muslim world,” I asked, “if military force were used to counter Iran’s nuclear program? It could lead, among other things, to an extremist regime in Pakistan, where they already have more than fifty nuclear weapons.”
The only solution, I told Sarkozy, was to engage the Iranians. I suggested proposing a freeze—that is, no further expansion—on Iran’s enrichment activities, in exchange for an end to sanctions, a commitment from the West to provide the Iranians with French reactors, and a commitment by Iran to allow the Agency to conduct a robust inspection program. Complete suspension of enrichment, I explained, was no longer a meaningful request. It would not reduce “risk” in any sense; Iran already had the knowledge. They could always continue to work underground. Insisting on suspension would only make Iran lose face. From a proliferation perspective, robust inspection was much more important.
To my complete surprise, Sarkozy abruptly shifted gears. Without consulting any of the top brass sitting around the table or even looking at them, he said he would agree to support my proposal, including supplying Iran with French reactors. I could see the anxiety break out on the faces of his associates. Clearly, he had made the decision on the spot.
I told him I would contact the Iranians to see if I could get a positive response, and the meeting wrapped up soon afterward. As Sarkozy was escorting me out, I congratulated him on his marriage. He beamed.
I met separately with Kouchner, a very likable, affable person. The French had tried a number of times to engage Tehran, he said, including inviting officials to Paris the previous November. They had gotten no response. Kouchner thought the Iranians might have concluded it would be better to wait for a new U.S. administration. He gave me his mobile telephone number, saying I should call him directly if I heard back from the Iranians.
Over the weekend, in Vienna, I rang Aghazadeh and asked him to come see me early the following week. But on the very day I was supposed to see him, I received a call from François-Xavier Deniau, the French ambassador, saying I should not convey any message to the Iranians before the French sent me some “clarifications.” This was embarrassing, I said. Aghazadeh was on his way to see me. If they had “clarifications,” why could they not have provided them in Paris?
Deniau’s answer, three days later, was to show up with a note verbale saying that, in effect, the French would engage with Iran directly, not through me. With surprise and dismay, I told him this was neither diplomatic nor appropriate. “Usually,” I said, “I take the words of a president at face value.” Obviously, the people around Sarkozy had convinced him that the Americans would react negatively to his agreeing to my proposal. France would be seen as taking a lone initiative, outside the framework of the P-5+1.
Deniau tried to convince Philippe Jamet, one of my French colleagues at the IAEA, that I had in fact “misunderstood” what Sarkozy had said. Jamet, who had been at the meeting himself, replied sarcastically, “This is a clever way of rewriting history.”
The much-maligned, then much-commended work plan furnished the meat of my positive February 2008 report to the Board on Iran. We had made significant strides: the last of our questions about the low-and high-enriched uranium particles we had detected at various locations in Iran had finally been answered. The Iranians had explained their polonium experiments, their activities at the Gchine mine, and the procurement activities of the former head of the Physics Research Center. The last of the discrepancies about Iran’s past procurement of P-1 and P-2 centrifuges had been addressed in my November 2007 report. While there had been a few minor delays, the Iranians had held steadily to their commitment to the work plan. It was the most consistent and committed cooperation we had experienced in years.
Only one issue remained: the alleged weaponization studies that had come to us from U.S. intelligence. These included the so-called Green Salt Project,[32] high explosives testing, and designs for a missile reentry vehicle to accommodate a nuclear warhead. Taken together, these elements pointed to a possible nuclear weapons program, particularly given the indication of administrative interconnections between the various aspects of these studies.
The problem was, no one knew if any of this was real. The allegations had supposedly originated from a laptop computer that held extensive supporting documentation. U.S. intelligence said they had been handed the laptop in mid-2004. They told us it had come from Iran but refused to reveal their source. They said only that their source had gotten it from a third party and that there was reason to believe this person was now dead.
“I can fabricate that data. It looks beautiful, but is open to doubt.” This statement, from an anonymous “senior European diplomat” quoted in the New York Times, was a typical reaction that was echoed by multiple nuclear experts.[33] The documentation on the laptop seemed damning but only if it could be proven authentic. Not being able to trace the source made the information extremely tough to verify. Worse still, the United States refused to release copies of most of the documentation so that we could share it with Iran to begin the investigative process. What little we could pass on, Iran dismissed as fabricated and baseless.
33
William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran’s Nuclear Aims,”