Perilous Weakness on Iraq

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna warns that Iraq’s decision to stop cooperating with U.N. arms inspectors could mean that it is again preparing to try to build nuclear weapons. That is an ominous turnaround from the IAEA’s earlier finding that Iraq appeared to have given up its clandestine nuclear program. So a threat that seemed to have been largely eliminated has suddenly reappeared. If Iraq effectively defies the inspection process, the world will have to worry not just that Saddam Hussein’s rogue government will soon reacquire chemical and biological weapons but quite possibly a nuclear capability as well.

At this point the prospects for successful defiance look pretty good.

Confronted last week with Baghdad’s refusal to cooperate with the weapons inspectors, the U.N. Security Council could do no better than produce its customary demand that Iraq behave itself, pointedly omitting any “or else” to lend emphasis to its determination. The United States proved to be no more decisive.

In tearing up its promise of last February to allow the inspectors unconditional access to whatever they wanted to see, said a State Department spokesman, Iraq is only hurting itself and assuring that the sanctions in force since the 1990-91 Gulf War will continue. But that analysis assumes, in the face of nearly eight years of experience to the contrary, that Hussein’s top priority is to have the sanctions lifted. If that were so he would long ago have shown the inspectors everything they wanted to see, instead of constantly putting impediments in their path.

What the evidence shows unmistakably is that his key interest is to hold on to the means to make terror weapons, even as he steadily chips away at the Security Council’s demonstrably weakening intention to keep the sanctions in place.

Six months ago, when Hussein last blocked the inspectors from doing their work, the United States and Britain significantly added to their military forces near Iraq. Most of that augmentation has since been withdrawn. If President Clinton again wanted to put muscle behind American support for U.N. resolutions on Iraq, he would have to order another costly movement of ships, planes and personnel to the Persian Gulf. Moreover, he would have to do so in the face of opposition from Iraq’s sympathizers and apologists, including Russia and France on the Security Council, and a probable lack of support from American public opinion.

For now, the administration is temporizing. Maybe, despite its earlier tough words, that’s all it intends to do. If so, and if Baghdad does not yield to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s latest plea to resume cooperating with the arms inspectors, Hussein will have achieved a major political victory. Iraq has shown it can live with the sanctions. Soon the Middle East may find it must live with an Iraq that, with little interference, is rearming itself with weapons of mass destruction.