Amano: The Diplomat Everyone Wants to Remain Director-General

Yukiya Amano, the 69-year-old Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is a Japanese diplomat who has served in various positions within his country's Foreign Ministry, eventually becoming the head of the Disarmament Office. This role prepared him for subsequent responsibilities. Amano later became Japan's ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna and at one point was the chairman of the Board of Governors, during the tenure of Mohamed ElBaradei, the previous director-general. In 2009, Japan announced it would nominate Amano for the position of Director-General. Competing against a South African representative, Amano garnered the support of several member states in December 2009 and took the helm of the agency at a time when ElBaradei was criticizing the West's approach to Iran's nuclear issue and was accused by the U.S. of being lenient towards Tehran. Mark Hibbs, a senior nuclear analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, assesses Amano's election eight years ago as a response to concerns from some member states about the agency's management atmosphere. "Mr. Amano came to the agency at a time when member states felt that in the last years of ElBaradei's directorship, his position and weight in the international community gave the director's office a kind of freedom of action, which member states were not satisfied with, and they wanted to strengthen their role in this process. Mr. Amano came into this environment and was elected by a very narrow margin, and his challenge after being elected was to create an environment that would provide sufficient support for him to carry out his responsibilities. He won by only a little more than the votes of advanced and strong countries that wanted the director-general to steer the agency away from political performance and turn it into a purely technical institution, a role it traditionally had." Hibbs adds, "It seemed that Amano would do this, but he soon realized that if he wanted to reach a consensus among member states, he had to consider the interests of many developing countries on the Board of Governors that had not supported him. In a way, he was forced to politicize the agency again, and tensions arose from the very beginning." At this time, the agency was dealing with complex international challenges, including Iran's nuclear program. Over the years, Amano has consistently emphasized, using limited vocabulary and providing uniform responses to the media, that the agency he leads is a technical international body, and his work and that of his colleagues are outside the realm of politics. During Amano's two terms as director-general, the Iranian nuclear file became so complicated that the heaviest sanctions were imposed against Tehran, and it was during these two terms that six world powers reached a nuclear agreement with Iran, with the agency responsible for monitoring its implementation by Iran. This agreement could not have been achieved without the director-general's report on the potentially military aspects of Iran's nuclear program, known as PMD, and closing this file. The agency's oversight of Iran's implementation of the JCPOA meant that, according to the agency, its human resources in relation to Iran had increased 120-fold, and the agency's budget for its role in this area had also increased. Now, although Amano stated in a statement when he was nominated for the directorship in 2009 that he would not seek to serve more than two terms according to the agency's tradition, he is now receiving the approval of member states of the Board of Governors for another four years in office. Mark Hibbs in Germany believes that the agency's important role regarding the JCPOA is one of the reasons he will remain as director-general for another four years. "The agreement requires the agency to commit to this process for ten to fifteen years, and it is very likely that both Amano and the member states have come to the conclusion that the best situation is for him to remain in the position of director-general, especially since he has been present throughout the process of reaching the agreement and has strongly supported it and called for its implementation. This may have led member states to conclude that changing the director-general at this specific juncture could carry risks, especially considering the previously polarized environment regarding who should lead the agency." Yukiya Amano must now, after receiving support from all member states of the Board of Governors, also secure the approval of the General Conference to maintain leadership of the IAEA at least until 2021.