What the Inspectors Say
Iran continues to stonewall about its illicit nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency isn’t falling for it. Nobody should.
The agency’s latest report is chilling. While Tehran claims that its program has solely peaceful ends, it lists seven activities with potential “military dimensions.” That includes “activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile”; new evidence that Iran has worked on a highly sophisticated nuclear triggering technology; and research on missile warhead designs — namely “studies involving the removal of the conventional high explosive payload from the warhead of the Shahab 3 missile and replacing it with a spherical nuclear payload.”
After the Iraq debacle, all claims must be examined closely. The I.A.E.A. has a strong record — in the run-up to the war it insisted there was no evidence that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program — and no ax to grind. There are still more questions to be answered.
American intelligence agencies, rightly chastened by their failure in Iraq, concluded in 2007 that Tehran had halted the weapons portion of its nuclear program four years earlier. United States officials now say that Iran’s massive “Manhattan Project” ended then but that many of the same scientists are still engaged in weapons-related pursuits. Meanwhile, Yukiya Amano, the head of the I.A.E.A., said in a news conference last week that “the activities in Iran related to the possible military dimension seem to have been continued until quite recently.” More explanation is needed.
Tehran insists the agency’s allegations are fabricated. At the same time, it is refusing to answer the inspectors’ questions about possible work on weapons designs and is blocking their access to sites, equipment and documents. Five years after the United Nations Security Council ordered it to halt uranium enrichment, Iran still has thousands of centrifuges spinning at its Natanz plant.
We don’t know if any mixture of sanctions and incentives will change that behavior. We are certain that without more pressure Tehran will keep pushing its program forward. The major powers’ last attempt at negotiations, in January, hit a wall, but Washington and its allies should keep looking for diplomatic openings. The fourth round of United Nations sanctions, imposed a year ago, is starting to bite, reducing Iran’s access to foreign capital, trade and investments. But implementation is still lagging.
The European Union finally moved last month to rein in the Iranian-owned bank in Germany, the European-Iranian Trade Bank, which is accused of facilitating billions of dollars of transactions for blacklisted Iranian companies. China has yet to sufficiently crack down on the Chinese firms that still do business with Iran’s sanctioned entities. Turkey, India and the United Arab Emirates, a major hub for Iranian commerce, are still too cozy with Tehran.
Iran has not wasted the intervening year and is always looking for signs of weakness. The United States and its allies need to tighten the current round of sanctions and start working on another Security Council resolution with even tougher sanctions.
If there is any good news in the I.A.E.A. report, it appears that Iran’s enrichment program is not advancing as fast as many feared — the result of the Stuxnet computer virus and sanctions that make it harder for Tehran to import needed materials from overseas. That has not blunted its ambitions. The Iranians said on Wednesday that they plan to triple production of the most concentrated nuclear fuel — the kind that could get them closer to a bomb.
False Claims About FOIA
It was a bad sign when the Supreme Court relied on the dictionary as the main authority in a recent ruling that made it harder for whistle-blowers to hold government contractors accountable for fraud.
The case, Schindler Elevator Corp. v. United States ex rel. Kirk, involves the federal False Claims Act, which allows a private party to bring an antifraud lawsuit on behalf of the federal government and receive part of the damages. The law bars such suits, however, if the allegations are based on publicly disclosed information, like a government report, investigation, criminal hearing or a news report. The ban exists to prevent superfluous private actions when the government can pursue a lawsuit.
In the current case, the plaintiff sued his former employer, Schindler Elevator, charging that it failed to comply with federal contracting rules on employing veterans. He based part of his case on written information from the Department of Labor, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The court’s ruling turns on whether that response is a publicly disclosed “report.” Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 5-to-3 majority, finds that Webster’s Third New International Dictionary all but settles the matter: it defines “report” as “something that gives information.” The broad meaning there, he says, squares with the “broad scope” of the prohibition against lawsuits based on public disclosures. His view could rule out most antifraud lawsuits based on FOIA requests.
That simplistic logic will curtail lawsuits by whistle-blowers who suspect that a contractor may be defrauding the government but need information obtained from FOIA requests to help confirm their allegations.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the dissent, argues convincingly that the way to decide whether a document obtained through a FOIA request bars a lawsuit is to assess the nature of the document. In response to most FOIA requests, the government hands over copies of records it finds or notes their absence; it usually doesn’t analyze or synthesize the information. Only a fraction of the material disclosed would qualify as a report.
The False Claims Act aims to “encourage more private enforcement” by whistle-blowers, the legislative history says. The court’s ruling does exactly the opposite, reviving an approach Congress discarded in 1986 because it foiled too many needed lawsuits. Justice Thomas’s opinion is wrong about the text, context and history of the law.
Mr. Babbitt’s Protest
Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt declared in a speech last week that President Obama’s failure to mount a persuasive counterattack to the Republicans’ “radical” assault on the country’s environmental safeguards amounts to a “form of appeasement.”
It is rare for someone of Mr. Babbitt’s stature to use such caustic language about a sitting president from his own party. But he was reflecting growing concern — which we share — that the president and his top aides have decided for political reasons to back away from the fight. In recent months the White House has been far too quiet on the problem of climate change, and its once-promising efforts to regulate industrial pollution, toxic coal ash and mountaintop mining are flagging.
Mr. Babbitt’s main complaint involved Mr. Obama’s failure to do more to conserve open space and protect sensitive areas threatened by imminent development. He was particularly dismayed by the White House’s acceptance of a Republican budget rider — pushed by the oil and gas industry — undercutting the Interior Department’s authority to identify and set aside valuable public lands for future designation as permanent wilderness.
Mr. Babbitt said Mr. Obama still represented “the best, and likely only, hope for meaningful progress” on energy and the environment, and we must hope, as he does, that the president’s temporizing is merely temporary. Even bigger fights lie ahead. The administration has proposed to limit power plant emissions of toxic pollutants like mercury and impose new rules governing power plant emissions of greenhouse gases. Any retreat from these pledges would be disastrous.
Mr. Babbitt also said President Obama should emulate President Bill Clinton, Mr. Babbitt’s old boss, who faced similar opposition after the 1994 Republican revolution but came roaring back. After wavering for a while, he seized the lead on conservation issues and threatened to veto all anti-environmental legislation. The public supported him; the Republicans retreated. It is sound advice.
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