I think the assumption that Hans Blix and his coilleagues had was that they would report back to the Security Council. At some point they would say, either that their immediate work was successfully completed and that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, or that they were being obstructed and couldn't complete their work. At which point it would be the job of the Security Council to decide what to do next.

Hans Blix several times indicated that he envisaged that, once the inspectors would have determined that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, an open ended monitoring process would be set up to keep an eye on things in Iraq, and make sure that things stayed that way.

Sounds a very sensible way of going about it, and an excellent precedent for similar operations in other countries as and when needed.