# Mohamed ElBaradei Mohamed ElBaradei (born 1942) is an Egyptian lawyer and diplomat who led the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1997 to 2009. He was the international official who most directly contradicted the [[George W. Bush]] administration's nuclear case against Iraq — and was vindicated, sharing the [[Nobel Peace Prize]] in a decision widely read as a rebuke to the [[Iraq War]]. ## The Niger Forgery ElBaradei's most consequential act came in March 2003, weeks after the [[Powell UN Presentation]]. The administration had cited documents purporting to show that Iraq sought "yellowcake" uranium from [[Niger]] as evidence of a reconstituted nuclear program — a claim that had appeared in Bush's State of the Union address. The IAEA examined the documents and quickly determined they were crude forgeries, and ElBaradei said so publicly before the UN Security Council. Combined with his finding that the aluminum tubes were not suited to centrifuges, his verdict dismantled the nuclear pillar of the case for war. Administration officials were reportedly furious and opposed his reappointment. ## Nobel Prize and After In 2005 ElBaradei and the IAEA jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to prevent the military use of nuclear energy — an award many interpreted as a pointed message to Washington. Alongside [[Hans Blix]], he represents in the vault the verification process the [[Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure]] overrode. He later returned to Egyptian politics, becoming a figurehead of the [[Arab Spring]] pro-democracy uprising and briefly serving as interim vice president in 2013 before resigning in protest over a deadly crackdown. ## See Also - [[Iraq War]] - [[Powell UN Presentation]] - [[Hans Blix]] - [[Iraq WMD Intelligence Failure]] - [[Colin Powell]]