Leave it to Mohammed ElBaradei to make the world safe for Iranian nukes.

Scurrying hither and thither like some kind of peripatetic Energizer Bunny, the head of the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nobel Peace Prize winner has been a busy little bee since breathing fire and talking tough a few weeks ago regarding Iranian nukes. At that point, 27 out of 35 nations voted to take Iran to the Security Council woodshed so that economic sanctions could be considered.

Not so fast says our fearless watchpuppy:

TEHRAN, Feb. 20, 2006 (UPI)—The head of the U.N.’s atomic watchdog agency claims the threat of sanctions against Iran will make the current nuclear program standoff worse.

Mohammed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said threatening sanctions on Iran for operating a uranium enrichment plant will make matters worse and in the end won’t work because China and Russia—two veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council—oppose sanctions.

ElBaradei also said Iran has a sovereign right to operate the plant and feels the course to go is strike a deal to limit enrichment, Itar-Tass reports.

Please note first how we have gone from trying to prevent Iran from enriching uranium to limiting their enrichment. In other words, instead of allowing their centrifuges once fully operational to enrich enough uranium to make 30 nuclear bombs a year, maybe we should only allow them the ability to create 20 ten kiloton nuclear warheads.

Super.

This is the same Mohammed ElBaradei who leaked the bogus information about missing explosives from al Qaqaa one week before the US presidential election in 2004 trying to influence the outcome. It’s the same Mohammed ElBaradei who allowed Saddam Hussein to keep 500 tons of yellowcake uranium at a nuclear site in Iraq called Al-Tuwaitha until the US military carted away the fissile material in disgust following the fall of Baghdad. This is the same Mohammed ElBaradei who insisted that North Korea’s nuclear program was peaceful. Ditto for ElBaradei regarding Iran.

And now that every country on the planet knows that Iran is working as fast as it can to gather enough enriched uranium to blow Israel off the map (and God knows who else) we have our brave UN Nuclear Enabler-in-Chief backing down from his original position of trying to beat some sense into the radioactive mullahs in Iran. So what has changed since earlier this month? It appears that ElBaradei, like most bureaucrats, hates confrontation – despite the fact that part of his job description is confronting rogue nuclear states – and doesn’t want to “make things worse.”

Excuse me, would someone please bop the Nobel Prize winner on the head and ram a steel rod up his backside to stiffen his spine just a touch? This is what President Ahmadinejad has been counting on all along; that the UN and the west just don’t have the stomach for this confrontation. Couple that with the machinations of the inscrutable Chinese and the extraordinary cynicism of Russia and you have the recipe for a full fledged meltdown of international will when it comes to placing a stop order on the desires of the fanatics in Tehran to get their hands on the ultimate defense against cartoon blasphemy.

At least western Europe appears to be waking up and may be willing to initiate some kind of sanctions regime with the US even if China and/or Russia veto such a proposal in the Security Council. And even if they don’t veto it, watch for the proposal to be so watered down as to be almost meaningless anyway.

When the history of the beginning of the 21st century is written – if we are vouchsafed such a luxury – let it be said that the international institution whose primary responsibility it was to prevent the one country in human history with a desire to bring about Armageddon failed miserably to stand up and be counted when it counted the most.