Israel Matzav

Obama takes Iran off the Security Council agenda

This is beyond belief. Trying to distract the American people from his failures in turning around the US economy and reforming healthcare, President Obumbler has decided to boldly go where no US President has gone before: He is going to chair the UN Security Council. But that's only where the trouble begins. The Chairman of a Security Council session gets to set its agenda. Here's Obama's agenda, as announced by UN ambassador Susan Rice at her first press briefing since the US assumed the Council's presidency:

“The session will be focused on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly, and not on any specific countries.”

Anne Bayefsky explains.

This seemingly innocuous language has two profoundly disturbing features. First, UN documents indicate that the Security Council is currently dealing with over 100 issues. While “non-proliferation” is mentioned, “disarmament” is not. Similarly, a UN Secretariat compilation “forecasting the Council’s program of work” for the month of September — based on prior activities and requests — lists non-proliferation specifically in relation to Iran and North Korea and does not list disarmament. But in light of Obama’s wishes, a tailor-made subheading will likely be adopted under the existing entry “maintenance of international peace and security.” The new item will insist on simultaneous consideration of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament and make no mention of particular states.

This is no trivial technicality. The linguistic formula, which Obama’s confrere Qaddafi will undoubtedly exploit, shamelessly panders to Arab and Muslim states. It is a familiar recipe for stonewalling efforts to prevent Iran or other Muslim and Arab states from acquiring nuclear weapons until Israel is disarmed or Israel’s (unofficial) nuclear capacity is exposed and neutralized. It is also a frequent tool of those whose real goal is to stymie America’s defenses.

Second, Obama’s agenda preference indicates that he is dead-set against chairing a session on the non-proliferation issues already on the council’s plate — those that name Iran and North Korea. This stretches his “beer summit” technique to the global scale. Naming names, or identifying the actual threats to world peace, would evidently interfere with the spectacle of proclaiming affection for world peace in the abstract. The problem is that this feel-good experience will feel best of all to Iran, which has interpreted Obama’s penchant for form over substance to be a critical weakness. As a Tehran newspaper close to the regime snickered in July: “Their strategy consists of begging us to talk with them.”

As if that isn't enough, Bayefsky goes on to explain that Rice's cluelessness has even left the UN press corps totally dumbfounded:

At Ambassador Rice’s news briefing, she gave “an overview of the principal important meetings” to be held in September on her watch. After finishing the list of subjects without mentioning Iran or North Korea, she added: “So those are the highlights. We also have . . . three sanctions regimes that are up for regular review, chaired by the heads of the sanctions committees. We have Sudan, Iran and North Korea, and these are, I expect, likely to be uneventful and routine considerations of these various regimes.”

Even hard-boiled UN correspondents were surprised. Rice was asked to explain how the recent capture by the United Arab Emirates of containers of ammunition en route to Iran from North Korea could be construed as “uneventful and routine.” Her answer highlights the administration’s delinquency: “We are simply receiving . . . a regularly scheduled update . . . This is not an opportunity to review or revisit the nature of either of those regimes.”

Read the whole thing.

What could go wrong?

UPDATE SUNDAY 5:44 PM

Dr. Pat Santy is back blogging and has some interesting comments about this story here (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:21 PM