Spencer Ackerman says:

there’s no doubt that diplomatic outreach to Iran on the nuclear question suffers tremendously if Iran rejects the Vienna deal. Desired strategies have to bow to emergent realities, in the final analysis, and Iran just doesn’t appear like it will accept an eminently reasonable deal that would buy time for a diplomatic thaw. If this is indeed Iran’s formal response to Vienna, than sanctions look more likely now, and, frankly, appropriate.

I spoke with an eminent American national security hand (whom I cannot identify) who laid out a truly undesirable situation in which the United States tries to impose "crippling sanctions," as Secretary of State calls it, but fails at the Security Council.   At that point, the security expert says, the military option (which includes letting Israel fly over Iraq unperturbed) looks all the more palatable. This is a problem because 1) a strike won't much affect the pace of Iranian enrichment. 2) Iran will retaliate against American interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, and possibly elsewhere.  Something to think about at least. 

Meanwhile, I wanted to flag David Shorr's takedown of Robert Kagan's attempt to mix talk of "regime change" into diplomacy surrounding Iran's nuclear program.  I'd just add that, um, the main opposition candidate is also on the record against the IAEA deal that Ahmedinejad effectively rejected today. 

Pic from flickr

Secretary Clinton hit all the right notes about the International Atomic Energy Agency during her big non-proliferation speech yesterday.

Enhancing the IAEA’s capabilities to verify whether states are engaging in illicit nuclear activity is essential to strengthening the nonproliferation regime. The IAEA’s additional protocol, which allows for more aggressive, short-notice inspections should be made universal, through concerted efforts to persuade key holdout states to join.

Our experience with Iraq’s nuclear program before the 1991 Gulf War showed that the IAEA’s rights and resources needed upgrading. The additional protocol is the embodiment of those lessons. A failure to make this protocol the global standard means the world will have failed to heed the lessons of history at our collective peril. The IAEA should make full use of existing verification authorities, including special inspections. But it should also be given new authorities, including the ability to investigate suspected nuclear weapons-related activities even when no nuclear materials are present. And if we expect the IAEA to be a bulwark of the nonproliferation regime, we must give it the resources necessary to do the job.

Improving the IAEA’s ability to detect safeguard violations is not enough. Potential violators must know that if they are caught, they will pay a high price. That is certainly not the case today. Despite American efforts, the international community’s record of enforcing compliance in recent years is unacceptable. Compliance mechanisms and procedures must be improved. We should consider adopting automatic penalties for violation of safeguards agreements; for example, suspending all international nuclear cooperation, or IAEA technical cooperation projects until compliance has been restored. [emphasis mine]

On the legal front, there are still 25 non-nuclear countries that have yet to sign safeguard agreements that grant the IAEA full access to information that could lead to the IAEA deducing whether a state was developing a clandestine nuclear weapons program. A further 73 states have not signed the so-called additional protocols, which give broad, in-country access to IAEA inspectors. Without the kind of access granted though safeguard agreements and the additional protocol, the IAEA’s ability to detect weapons programs is severely strained. Unfortunately, as Clinton noted, the international community has done little to raise the costs for countries that refuse to enter agreements that let the IAEA do its job.

The IAEA also faces significant hurdles in its ability to act as an authority capable of conducting independent technical analysis. The IAEA, for example, lacks state-of-the art environmental sampling technology and must outsource this work to a small handful of labs in member states. This is problematic because the agency’s value rests in international perception that it is not a tool of any particular state, but an independent actor solely in pursuit of the truth. As Mohammed elBaradei notes, this perception is damaged when the IAEA must turn to its member states to provide technical analysis.

Finally, the IAEA’s struggle to obtain the most up-to-date technical resources is symptomatic of one recurring feature of the IAEA: constant underfunding. The IAEA’s total annual budget is about $400 million. This may seem like a significant outlay, but in American budgetary terms it amounts to far less than 1% of the budget of the Department of Defense. In 2008, an IAEA report found that the safeguards budget of the IAEA, which is meant to protect hundreds of tons of nuclear material in hundreds of facilities in scores of countries, is not more than the budget of the police department of the IAEA’s host city, Vienna, Austria.

 The bottom line is, if we are serious about combating proliferation, we need a strong IAEA.  This speech was an affirmation that the United States government recognizes the neccesity of an empowered IAEA. 

I'm live-tweeting the Security Council meeting on non-proliferation and disarmament for UN Dispatch

Full text of President Obama's opening statement below the fold:

The 6191st meeting of the Security Council is called to order. The provisional agenda for this meeting is before the Council in document S/Agenda/6191, which reads, "Maintenance of international peace and security, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear disarmament." Unless I hear any objection, I shall consider the agenda adopted. Agenda is adopted.

I wish to warmly welcome the distinguished heads of state and government, the General -- the Secretary General, the Director General of the IAEA, ministers and other distinguished representatives present in the Security Council chamber. Your presence is an affirmation of the importance of the subject matter to be discussed.

The Security Council summit will now begin its consideration of item two of the agenda. Members of the Council have before them document S/2009/473, which contains the text of a draft resolution prepared in the course of the Council's prior consultations. I wish to draw Council members' attention to document S/2009/463 containing a letter dated 16 September 2009 from the United States of America, transmitting a concept paper on the item under consideration. In accordance with the understanding reached earlier among members, the Security Council will take action on the draft resolution before it prior to hearing statements from the Secretary General and Council members. Accordingly, I shall put the draft resolution to the vote now. Will those in favor of the draft resolution contained in document S/2009/473 please raise their hand? The results of the voting is as follows: The draft resolution is received unanimously, 15 votes in favor. The draft resolution has been adopted unanimously as Resolution 1887 of 2009.

I want to thank again everybody who is in attendance. I wish you all good morning. In the six-plus decades that this Security Council has been in existence, only four other meetings of this nature have been convened. I called for this one so that we may address at the highest level a fundamental threat to the security of all peoples and all nations: the spread and use of nuclear weapons.

As I said yesterday, this very institution was founded at the dawn of the atomic age, in part because man's capacity to kill had to be contained. And although we averted a nuclear nightmare during the Cold War, we now face proliferation of a scope and complexity that demands new strategies and new approaches. Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city -- be it New York or Moscow; Tokyo or Beijing; London or Paris -- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.

Once more, the United Nations has a pivotal role to play in preventing this crisis. The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. And it brings Security Council agreement on a broad framework for action to reduce nuclear dangers as we work toward that goal. It reflects the agenda I outlined in Prague, and builds on a consensus that all nations have the right to peaceful nuclear energy; that nations with nuclear weapons have the responsibility to move toward disarmament; and those without them have the responsibility to forsake them.

Today, the Security Council endorsed a global effort to lock down all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. The United States will host a summit next April to advance this goal and help all nations achieve it. This resolution will also help strengthen the institutions and initiatives that combat the smuggling, financing, and theft of proliferation-related materials. It calls on all states to freeze any financial assets that are being used for proliferation. And it calls for stronger safeguards to reduce the likelihood that peaceful nuclear weapons programs can be diverted to a weapons program -- that peaceful nuclear programs can be diverted to a weapons program.

The resolution we passed today will also strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. We have made it clear that the Security Council has both the authority and the responsibility to respond to violations to this treaty. We've made it clear that the Security Council has both the authority and responsibility to determine and respond as necessary when violations of this treaty threaten international peace and security.

That includes full compliance with Security Council resolutions on Iran and North Korea. Let me be clear: This is not about singling out individual nations -- it is about standing up for the rights of all nations who do live up to their responsibilities. The world must stand together. And we must demonstrate that international law is not an empty promise, and that treaties will be enforced.

The next 12 months will be absolutely critical in determining whether this resolution and our overall efforts to stop the spread and use of nuclear weapons are successful. And all nations must do their part to make this work. In America, I have promised that we will pursue a new agreement with Russia to substantially reduce our strategic warheads and launchers. We will move forward with the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and open the door to deeper cuts in our own arsenal. In January, we will call upon countries to begin negotiations on a treaty to end the production of fissile material for weapons. And the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in May will strengthen that agreement.

Now, we harbor no illusions about the difficulty of bringing about a world without nuclear weapons. We know there are plenty of cynics, and that there will be setbacks to prove their point. But there will also be days like today that push us forward -- days that tell a different story. It is the story of a world that understands that no difference or division is worth destroying all that we have built and all that we love. It is a recognition that can bring people of different nationalities and ethnicities and ideologies together. In my own country, it has brought Democrats and Republican leaders together -- leaders like George Shultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, who are with us here today. And it was a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, who once articulated the goal we now seek in the starkest of terms. I quote:

"A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop until all -- we must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the Earth."

That is our task. That can be our destiny. And we will leave this meeting with a renewed determination to achieve this shared goal. Thank you.

In accordance with the understanding reached among Council members, I wish to remind all speakers to limit their statements to no more than five minutes in order to enable the Council to carry on its work expeditiously. Delegations with lengthy statements are kindly requested to circulate the text in writing and to deliver a condensed version when speaking in the chamber.

I shall now invite the distinguished Secretary General, His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, to take the floor.

On Friday, Bloomberg reported that the United Arab Emirates seized a shipment of munitions, detonators, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades, headed from North Korea to Iran. The shipment was in direct violation of UN sanctions on Iran.

...the ship, owned by an Australian subsidiary of a French company and sailing under a Bahamian flag, was carrying 10 containers of arms disguised as oil equipment.

The council committee that monitors enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea wrote letters to Iran and the government in Pyongyang asking for explanations of the violation, and one to the UAE expressing appreciation for the cooperation, the envoys said. No response has been received and the UAE has unloaded the cargo, they said.

This, as you might expect, also contributes to my ongoing nervousness over Burma and what it may have received from North Korea.