Failure to fact-check the derangement of Mohamed ElBaradei

Continuing with our analysis of Reuters public relations piece for Egyptian wannabe leader Mohamed ElBaradei, Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau uncritically quotes the former IAEA chief in his assessment of relations between Egypt and Israel:

He added that relations between Egypt and Israel constituted an imperfect peace and could be improved.
"It's a pseudo peace," he said. "You cannot even publish an Arab book in Israel. You cannot have an Israeli book published in Cairo. That is a very narrow definition of what you call peace."

The claim that Israel does not allow the publication or distribution of books by Arab authors or in the Arabic language is utterly false.  Up to 2009, it was illegal to import into Israel books printed in Syria or Lebanon (not Egypt) due to the official state of war with these countries.  A bill introduced by the Israeli Parliament that year ended this British Mandate-era law.

Egypt however, does appear to have an issue with Israeli books:

Over his career, [Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk] Hosni has accumulated a long record of opposing exchanges with Israel, repeatedly saying normalization must await resolution of the Palestinian issue and warning that opening up to Jewish culture would be dangerous for Egypt. But his most notorious sally came in May last year, when he told an Islamist member of the Egyptian parliament that he would personally burn any Israeli books found in Egyptian libraries.

An "imperfect peace" indeed.

Airbrushing Mohamed ElBaradei

In the same biographical piece on Mohamed ElBaradei discussed below, Reuters correspondent Louis Charbonneau explains why Western powers, particularly Israel, were frequently at odds with the former IAEA chief:

One of those disagreements concerned the Israeli bombing in September 2007 of what U.S. and Israeli officials said was a nascent nuclear reactor in Syria built with the help of North Korea. One former IAEA official said ElBaradei "went through the roof" when he found out about the Israeli strike against the facility, which Syria says was not a nuclear reactor.
Another diplomat said ElBaradei took the Israeli action as a "personal attack against him" and a "vote of no-confidence" because the Israelis decided to bomb the facility rather than ask the IAEA to confront Syria and inspect the site.
"The Israelis decided that ElBaradei could not be trusted to do anything about it so they chose to act pre-emptively and solve the problem," the diplomat said.
Two years later, in September 2009, Israel and France suggested that ElBaradei was sitting on IAEA findings that pointed more concretely to a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program. ElBaradei angrily denied any such cover-up. The Israeli ambassador to the IAEA made clear his disapproval of the outgoing IAEA chief and conspicuously left his seat empty during a closed-door gathering of agency member states who took turns heaping praise on ElBaradei for his 12 years at the nuclear watchdog.

Charbonneau assumes a disinterested stance on the contention between ElBaradei and Israel and fails to inform readers that Syria is still stonewalling the United Nations and new IAEA chief, Yukiya Amano, in their efforts to investigate the site bombed by Israel -- at which significant traces of man-made uranium had been detected.

Charbonneau also fails to disclose to his audience that just weeks after the accusation by Israel and France that ElBaradei had covered-up evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons program, it was revealed publicly that ElBaradei and the IAEA had indeed known for many months that Iran had the data to build a nuclear bomb and had tested an advanced nuclear warhead design:

While the analysis represents the judgment of the nuclear agency’s senior staff, a struggle has erupted in recent months over whether to make it public. The dispute pits the agency’s departing director, Mohamed ElBaradei, against his own staff and against foreign governments eager to intensify pressure on Iran.

Apparently Charbonneau didn't feel that information would assist readers in their assessment of whether "Mohamed ElBaradei's time has arrived".

Reuters, Mohamed ElBaradei, and the Muslim Brotherhood

With all eyes on the turmoil in Egypt and the possible overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Mohamed ElBaradei is increasingly being seen as the most likely successor to autocratic rule under Mubarak.  ElBaradei has called for Mubarak's ouster and offered to form a government in a power sharing arrangement with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Reuters correspondents have a long history of penning obsequious stories about ElBaradei under whose watch, Iran's nuclear program made significant advances.  One of Reuters' favored techniques in its campaign to boost the former IAEA Chief and to simultaneously cast doubt on Iran's bellicose nuclear aspirations has been to selectively quote ElBaradei in his various and inconsistent assessments of Iran's nuclear activities.  We wrote about that here.

Reuters has also sought to sanitize the nature and objectives of the "conservative" Muslim Brotherhood and its offspring like Hamas.

If ElBaradei does indeed come to power in Egypt, particularly with the Muslim Brotherhood at his side, it will be interesting to see how Reuters correspondents spin this development and whether the agency continues to shield these players from criticism.

Off to a good start!

That's a quote from the Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, with which Reuters leads a story on today's nuclear powwow between Iran and Russia, the US, and France. Er, strike that; Iran has refused to negotiate with France as the former claims the latter "has failed to deliver nuclear materials in the past".

And to demonstrate the seriousness with which it views the talks, Iran sent only "a lower-level technical delegation" to Vienna. Oh by the way, did we mention that Iran issued an ultimatum prior to the meeting that it would purify uranium to yield the 150-300 kg of material it needs for its nuclear reactor "if the Vienna talks do not bring about Iran's desired result." Then there's this vote of confidence:

Tehran has also denied Western accounts that it had tentatively agreed to major aspects of the proposal in Geneva.

And finally, this from Iran's nuclear energy agency spokesman, Ali Shirzadian:

We will never abandon our right (to enrich).

One has to hand it to Reuters: they actually report all of the above while spinning it madly to appear that all is well.

If it wasn't so deadly serious, it might be amusing.

R-MEW scoops Reuters

Well, it took a story from the New York Times for Reuters to finally get around to reporting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has concluded that "Iran has acquired sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” atom bomb.

Of course, we reported on this development as an update to our post "The Elephant in the Room" on September 18 following the original disclosure in an article by the Associated Press the same day.

We imagine that Reuters must have been waiting for one of the two Mohamed elBaradeis to get around to endorsing the IAEA conclusion but regrettably, that elBaradei appears to be on holiday in Iran while the other, less confrontational elBaradei apparently "cannot make any judgment at all" on the evidence.

Ah, the dilemmas of a Reuters' managing editor!

Reuters quotes one Mohamed ElBaradei, ignores the other

In a "TIMELINE" appearing today on its website, Reuters provides a history tracing important political developments in Iran's nuclear program over the last two years. In its only reference to the Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, Reuters writes:

"September 2 - Mohamed ElBaradei, outgoing director-general of the IAEA says Iran is not going to produce a nuclear weapon any time soon and the threat posed has been exaggerated."

Now, we admit that ElBaradei holds compelling views on the matter. In May of 2006 for example, he argued that Iran was not an immediate nuclear threat. Yet by June of 2008, he had indicated that by expelling IAEA inspectors, Iran could build a nuclear bomb in six months to one year. Then, in September 2008, ElBaradei stated that he could not "read minds" as to whether Iran would build a nuclear weapon. Yet in June 2009, ElBaradei admitted to feeling that Iran would like to have nuclear weapons, "......to send a message to their neighbors, to the rest of the world: don’t mess with us". This was followed by his quote in September of 2009 -- paraphrased by Reuters above -- that the Iranian nuclear threat was "hyped".

Indeed, compelling views -- depending on which Mohamed ElBaradei we are to believe: the expert who sees Iran as a regional threat capable of and intent on producing nuclear weapons in a matter of months, or the expert who thinks otherwise.

As chief of the UN watchdog responsible for assessing Iran's nuclear program, we recognize that Mohamed ElBaradei's views on the matter are vitally important and highly newsworthy. We simply wonder why, in a piece devoted to providing its readership with a history of salient events associated with Iran's nuclear program, Reuters chose to quote only one of the two Mohamed ElBaradeis.