Israel Matzav

Krauthammer: Iran is not isolated

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone and Chodesh tov, a good month to everyone.

The Obama administration claims that Iran is isolated as a result of the 'sanctions' that passed the UN Security Council this past week.

Charles Krauthammer says it's just not so.

On Tuesday, one day before the president touted passage of a surpassingly weak U.N. resolution and declared Iran yet more isolated, the leaders of Russia, Turkey, and Iran gathered at a security summit in Istanbul “in a display of regional power that appeared to be calculated to test the United States,” as the New York Times put it. I would add: And calculated to demonstrate the hollowness of U.S. claims of Iranian isolation, and to flaunt Iran’s growing ties with Russia and quasi-alliance with Turkey, a NATO member.

Apart from the fact that isolation is hardly an end in itself and is pointless if Iran rushes headlong to become a nuclear power regardless, the very claim of Iran’s increasing isolation is increasingly implausible. Just last month, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted an ostentatious love fest in Tehran with the leaders of Turkey and Brazil. The three raised hands together and announced a uranium-transfer deal that was designed to torpedo U.S. attempts to impose U.N. sanctions.

Six weeks ago, Iran was elected to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, a grotesque choice that mocked Obama’s attempt to isolate and delegitimize Iran in the very international institutions he treasures.

Increasing isolation? In the last year alone, Ahmadinejad has been welcomed in Kabul, Istanbul, Copenhagen, Caracas, Brasilia, La Paz, Senegal, and Gambia. Today, he is in China.

Three Iran sanctions resolutions passed in the Bush years. They were all passed without a single no vote. But after 16 months of laboring to produce a mouse, Obama garnered only twelve votes for his sorry sanctions, with Lebanon abstaining and Turkey and Brazil voting no.

Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:30 PM