On April 9, 2007 there was a United Nations "believe-it-or-not" moment that was fit for the comic books. At the same time that Iran's President Ahmadinejad declared his country was now capable of industrial-scale uranium enrichment AND had kidnapped and imprisoned a dozen British sailors, the U.N. re-elected Iran as a vice chairman of the U.N. Disarmament Commission. The very U.N. body charged with promoting nuclear nonproliferation installed in a senior position the state that the Security Council recently declared violated its nonproliferation resolutions.
In Iran, Ahmadinejad gloated at the Natanz nuclear facility: "With great pride, I announce as of today our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale" (in violation of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty- NPT). At the same time, the Iranian vice chairman of the U.N. Disarmament Commission, Seyed Mohammad Ali Robatjazi, railed against "noncompliance with the NPT by the United States" and "the Zionist lobby."
It took the U.N. a mere five days to consider Iran "rehabilitated" after the British kidnap victims made it home alive. Just the night before on April 8, Faye Turney, the only female victim, revealed her Iranian abductors stripped her to her underwear, caged her in a tiny, freezing cell, and subjected her to mental torture such as leading her to believe that her death was imminent.
This is not simply a very bad joke. The U.N. is considered by many as the go-to address for international progress in the world today. Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, declared at a hearing on U.N. reform in February that "the U.N. provides vital support to core U.S. foreign-policy initiatives" including on Iran and the way forward is to "ratchet up" our level of diplomacy there."
Looks like the only "ratcheting up" is the hostility aimed squarely at the USA and Israel. Congressman Lantos and his close friend, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, have long been drinking from the same well. The "reformed" Human Rights Council was Annan's creation. Lantos is the leading advocate of the United States joining the Human Rights Council - where presumably we could jump up and down while exercising one vote out of 47. Annan, of his own volition, went to Tehran last September and urged the world not to isolate Iran immediately after the Iranian president had ignored a Security Council deadline to suspend its nuclear activities. Lantos confessed to the House Committee at the end of February that he has been begging for a visa to go to Iran for the past ten years and "will be among the first ones to do so once this visa is granted."
Lantos was pleased with his recent trip, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to Syria. Obviously, the U.N. shares his view that one of the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism ought to be a welcome player on the world stage. Following the election on Monday, April 9th, of Iran as vice chairman, the U.N. Disarmament Commission elected Syria as its rapporteur to investigate the issue of nuclear nonproliferation non-compliance and report back to the commission.
The line between U.N. diplomacy and farce has been crossed. As long as the UN is held hostage to the rantings of third world dictatorships and banana republics who use the UN as an anti-US platform, we should chart our own course - with our true allies - by strengthening and expanding NATO.
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