Following the military coup that ousted the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei has been appointed interim Prime Minister of Egypt.
ElBaradei received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for his work as chairman of the International Atomic Entergy Agency (IAEA). And he was one of the Egyptian leaders that led to the ousting of president Hosni Mubarak.
But Israel has a very different and not particularly positive view of the man.
In 2011, Israeli officials made some very harsh accusations against ElBaradei, including calling him an “agent of Iran”, claiming that ElBaradei assisted Iran in covering up their nuclear program. In the past, ElBaradei defended the Iranian nuclear program, claiming it was peaceful.
Eventually ElBaradei”exposed” some information about the Iranian nuclear program and said they “might” be attempting to build nuclear weapons, but Israel said, that none of the information he “exposed” was unknown or even new.
On his part, ElBaradei said there was a perceived double-standard in relation to Israel’s nuclear weapons program and in particular, Israel’s not being a signatory to the NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty). ElBaradei wants Israel to sign the NPT, which would then force Israel to open up its nuclear weapons cache (if it exists) to foreign scrutiny.
Iran is a signatory to the NPT, but that obviously hasn’t stopped them from pursuing nuclear weapons.
ElBaradei told the New York Times in 2009 that “Israel would be utterly crazy to attack Iran”.
In 2011 he also told Der Spiegel in an interview that Israel has a peace treaty with a single man [Mubarak], not Egypt.
Congratulations Egypt.