--- title: 10 Questions for Mohamed ElBaradei | TIME description: The world's top nuclear watchdog discusses security, the Iraq war and Iran. Mohamed ElBaradei will now take your questions canonical: https://time.com/video/zWCbvsLG/ og:title: 10 Questions for Mohamed ElBaradei og:description: The world's top nuclear watchdog discusses security, the Iraq war and Iran. Mohamed ElBaradei will now take your questions og:url: https://time.com/video/zWCbvsLG/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/zWCbvsLG/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 10 Questions for Mohamed ElBaradei twitter:description: The world's top nuclear watchdog discusses security, the Iraq war and Iran. Mohamed ElBaradei will now take your questions twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/zWCbvsLG/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 10 Questions for Mohamed ElBaradei > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions for Mohamed ElBaradei [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions for Mohamed ElBaradei](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/zWCbvsLG.m3u8) (6:28)  _Published 2009-08-06. The world's top nuclear watchdog discusses security, the Iraq war and Iran. Mohamed ElBaradei will now take your questions_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:12 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [10 Questions for Shimon Peres](/video/AGcrw599/) ### 10 Questions for Shimon Peres [Mohamed ElBaradei: Egypt's Uprisings Foretold](/video/jN6e8mh2/) ### Mohamed ElBaradei: Egypt's Uprisings Foretold [10 Questions for Susan Sarandon](/video/zsuIZMne/) ### 10 Questions for Susan Sarandon --- ## Transcript >> I'm Stephan Faris with Time, and I'm here at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency with Mohamed ElBaradei, who served as director general of the agency for three terms and he's retiring in November. Mr. ElBaradei will be taking questions from Time readers. [ unk ] Mumbai, India, asks, " What were your most satisfying as well as the least satisfying moments at the agency ?" >> Well, I think the most satisfying moment or moments when I had been to Ghana [ unk ], when I've been recently to Tanzania, and I saw lives have been saved. Children who have been suffering from cancer have had the opportunity to be treated through radiotherapy machines provided by the agency. This has been I think some of the most satisfying moments of my life, to be able to affect, you know, affect change, help heal the sick, and help the poor. The most dissatisfying moment of my life, of course, is when the Iraq-- where we launched sidestepping international law on the use of [ unk ], there waking a war that has cost us hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians all the [ unk ] of flimsy information and not solid fact that-- like the one provided by the agency to the security council. >> Do you think the Iraqi war that is also-- were counter to your mandate here? >> Again, we have-- it were counter to our mandate because we continue to report to security council that we have seen more evidence that Iraq have revived its weapons-- nuclear weapon program. It run counter, of course, because it was way too a lot-- the consent of the security council which is, you know-- again, our-- the overall compliance mechanism. And-- but it's not only question of intention. No, it's a question of humanity. I mean, I-- you know, every time I see that hundreds thousands people lost their lives, you know, in vain, you know, on the basis of fiction and not facts, that obviously makes me-- makes me shudder. >> Israel is long rumored to have nuclear weapons. Why is everyone else in the Middle East, particularly Iran, being threatened with military action if they-- if they try to pursue that technology? >> Well, the security situation in the Middle East is totally messy. All the countries on the Middle East are part of the Non- Proliferation Treaty, with the exception of Israel. That is their claim that, of course, they need nuclear weapons to-- as a deterrence against any, you know, possible threat to its existence. The other states were then-- in return feel that this is an imbalance system of security. There is a sense of humiliation and impotence. The regime as a result is losing legitimacy. In the Middle East, it is still legal, but it is losing legitimacy. The solution obviously is to address their causes: a solution to the Palestinian issue, a decent security in the Middle East, and elimination of all nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. Otherwise, we'll continue to have the Middle East as a hotbed for effort to-- to acquire nuclear weapon and other weapon of mass destruction. >> Nuclear power plants are coming back in force in the US, Europe, and Asia. Do you think that this new energy strategy will strengthen the role of the IAEA? Do you favor this new strategy? >> It would definitely add a lot of responsibilities because lot-- the more countries making new [ unk ]-- nuclear power, the more we have to engage ourselves in ensuring that these programs are safe, secure, and not misused for military purposes. But energy is the engine for development, and development is life. Nuclear power alone is not the panacea, but we have to use all available sources of energy, you know. A renewable, fossil fuel, hydro-- nuclear has to be thought of the energy mix because it also provide energy security. It's a clean source of energy. It also guard against, you know, fluctuation, and energy prices. So the-- I saw that as inevitable, that we will have to rely on also source of energy. But we'll have to manage it all in a very responsible way. -" How do you guarantee a country's using nuclear power property ?" asks [ unk ] of Simi Valley, California. " And why should such guarantees be trusted by the international community ?" >> We can provide as much guarantee as we have the legal authority, as we have the resources, as we have the technology. We are doing our very best to fund but we-- there is still much more that we need in terms of resources, in terms of, you know, legal authority to be able to do absolutely robust and credible verification. I continue to say that unless we have that, we-- our conclusion would be tentative. So if the [ unk ] commission wants to have an ironclad gold standard inspection guarantees, they better give us-- what-- the wherewithal, the tools that allows us to do such an inspection. >> So it's a-- it's a-- the resources and not the compliance of the-- of the-- >> Oh absolutely. The resources we have, you know, is totally not in- sync with what we are expected to do. And right now, I'm in the middle of a budget fight, if you like, and basically saying it is member states who have the obviously the prerogative to decide how much money available to us. But is it my responsibility to tell them whether their money is able to buy what they expect us to deliver. >> What world leaders do you believe are on the right track as far as nuclear policy goes? >> I think the ones currently are absolutely on the right track is Barack Obama, you know. He's really changing the conventional wisdom. President [ unk ] from Russia has also joined forces with Barack Obama. Gordon Brown have made a similar statement that we need to move to a nuclear summit. These people are I think finally have come to realize that the status quo is a-- is a-- is a recipe for self- destruction that particularly with the technology out of the tube, particular with nuclear terrorism becoming a realistic prospect, we need to-- we need to move as fast as we can, as soon as we can [ unk ] concrete measure toward threat from nuclear weapons. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Questions for Mohamed ElBaradei","description":"The world's top nuclear watchdog discusses security, the Iraq war and Iran. 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