How can diplomacy succeed, even when managed by men like Mohamed El-Baradei or George Mitchell, when they have to deal with Benjamin Netanyahu or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

I do not think the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed El-Baradei will come out of his office in Vienna at the beginning of next week satisfied with what he has achieved during the 12 years for which he has served as the head of this agency. Baradei was unlucky, having had to handle difficult issues with regimes not known for their leniency, from Saddam Hussein to Kim Jong-Il, and up to Ahmadinejad. This diplomat and academic, who moved between the hallways of Egypt’s Foreign Ministry and the United Nations buildings of New York and Geneva before reaching Vienna, has dealt with these people with a lot of skill and diplomacy, trying to keep the big stick as far as possible from the methods followed by the agency under his leadership. And he was hoping, especially in dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue, to find in Tehran those who would listen and have greater trust in his management, especially as his constant calls for Western countries to adopt the method of dialogue with Iran had at many occasions brought him criticism from these countries, as well as accusations of being biased.

This is why the IAEA resolution voted upon yesterday, demanding that Iran stop the construction of the nuclear facility near the city of Qom, came as a disappointment for Baradei and for those who, like him, had wagered that the method of making truce and offering incentives would prove useful with Iran, although the language used by the leaders of the Iranian regime to address the world is sufficient evidence that the method of making truce is not the best one to obtain compromises and middle ground solutions from this regime.

Mohamed El-Baradei did not take charge of these heated issues by choice, as it simply happened that they all exploded together at the time when he took over the delicate responsibility of representing the world in monitoring the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the tremendous hopes that were hung on Baradei’s Arab origins may be what drove people to expect him to produce solutions, in comparison with what the case might be for example when Yukiya Amano, who is Japanese, takes over the direction of the IAEA in a few days.

The case of George Mitchell, however, is quite different. Perhaps President Barack Obama was inclined to choosing Mitchell as his representative to resolve the world’s most difficult crises, considering his Arab roots (his mother is of Lebanese descent) and his solid relations with a large number of leaders, politicians and journalists in the Arab region. His success at finding a settlement to the conflict in Northern Ireland might also have increased his chances of being selected. Yet there is a tremendous difference between the opportunities that were available to him in Belfast, Dublin and London, and those that are available to him in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv. There the “weapons” of settlement in Mitchell’s hands were ready for use, most importantly international agreement (between the Clinton Administration, the British government headed by Tony Blair and the Irish government headed by Bertie Ahern) In the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, on the other hand, the only “weapon” which Obama could have provided his personal envoy with to ensure the success of his mission was the weapon of firm resolve with Israel, to drive to respect its commitments in order to achieve peace, a weapon which it has become quite clear the US President is unable to use. Thus Mitchell ended up being forced to stand before the media and find reasons to praise the “unprecedented concessions” provided by Benjamin Netanyahu.

The result is one and the same for two men who were driven to resolve the two most difficult crises in the region, that being of course failure. Not to be unjust towards these two men, one must say that such a failure does not point to their lack of ability, as much as it proves that the age of diplomacy is not fitting for every time and place, and that there are regimes in this world that understand the desire to negotiate as powerlessness and defeat, and that leave no way of dealing with them but the language of force and of sanctions.