New IAEA chief Yukiya Amano
62-year old Japanese diplomat, Yukiya Amano arrived in Vienna today to assume leadership of the IAEA. Amano replaces Egyptian diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, who served as the director general of the agency for the past 12 years.
Mr. Amano is taking over the leadership role just as tensions are on the increase between UN members and Iran over the countries nuclear program.
Last week, Iranian officials announced that the country was to build 10 new nuclear installations that will serve to enrich uranium, for what Iran calls a "civilian," nuclear program.
"The situation around the agency is stormy now," Mr Amano said in his first address as head of the agency. "We have a lot of difficult issues and challenges, but I would like to do my best."
Following the announcement from Iran last week, the IAEA members passed a stern resolution against Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, which has been under investigation for the past seven years.
Tehran complained that the move was "an act of bullying" and said it would reduce co-operation with the agency to a minimum. Such moves prove to be more of the same from Iran, as the nation recently agreed to be more open and engaged with the UN during the last general assembly meeting.
The six-party talks that were held in October to discuss Iran's nuclear program failed to produce any viable results. Now Tehran has taken a step back from the UN and delivered the news of actually increasing their attempts at enriching uranium and moving the program forward.
Furthering emboldening Tehran no doubt, was the announcement released from China on Tuesday that the Beijing government would not support sanctions against Iran and has instead called for diplomatic efforts to be "stepped up".
Thus, after months of talk and more talk, the world is no further in stopping Iran from moving forward on its nuclear ambitions. Western powers argue that the country has aims at obtaining nuclear weapons, yet Iran disputes this saying they only want nuclear power for civilian purposes.
Does such a case as Iran do harm to President Obama's policy of strong diplomacy with Iran? The White House certainly has pursued such a strategy, and yet Tehran has been found to have developed a new enrichment site in Qom and now plan to build 10 more such sites. Is diplomacy going to be enough? Time will tell.
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