Det er vanskelig å se noen annen begrunnelse for å gi fredsprisen til Mohamed ElBaradei enn å gi USA en «slap in the face», skriver The Times, og betegner ElBaradei og hans innsats som mislykket.

In the past eight years, they have failed to detect covert nuclear programmes in at least three countries – and failed to get diplomatic purchase on the problems when others have finally brought them to light. That does not amount to a contribution to world peace.

The single judgment which ElBaradei has got right in his eight years as Director-General of the IAEA is the one most provocative to the US: that Iraq, in 2003, had no significant nuclear programme.
…
The IAEA’s «success» in not exaggerating the threat of Iraq in 2003 is compromised by the number of times it has missed a threat entirely: Saddam’s nuclear programme before 1991, the Libyan and Iranian programmes and the «nuclear supermarket» run by A Q Khan, the Pakistani scientist.

It was also slow to sound the alarm about North Korea’s conversion of its civil nuclear power into a weapons programme.

ElBaradei’s Nobel is about politics: he has been a failure