The UN Covers for Iran

The United Nations has continued its dismal record of providing cover for the barbaric Islamist Iranian regime. This time it was the UN’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council’s turn. Ignoring the regime’s recent massacres of many thousands of its own unarmed citizens, it nominated the regime to serve on a UN committee that will be addressing human rights, gender equality, and terrorism prevention. Canada, France, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, and the United Kingdom went along with this travesty. Only the United States objected.

A rubber stamp vote by the General Assembly endorsing Iran’s nomination to the committee is expected to take place in November

Ambassador Dan Negrea, the U.S. Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, said, “the United States disassociates from consensus on the nomination of Iran to the Committee on Program and Coordination. The regime threatens its neighbors and has, for decades, infringed on the Iranian people’s ability to exercise their basic human rights.”

A rubber stamp vote by the General Assembly endorsing Iran’s nomination to the committee is expected to take place in November.

When Canada’s Liberal government was asked during the House of Commons “question period” why it went along with Iran’s nomination for membership on the UN Committee for Program and Coordination, the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs dodged the question.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Anita Anand, tried to rationalize the decision by saying that there was nothing Canada could do. “As the position was uncontested, there was no opportunity for a vote,” she said. But that is not the point. Canada could have voiced its objection as the U.S. had done or called for a vote, but it took the cowardly way out instead.

The United Nations Security Council did show some fortitude for once when it voted on March 11^th to condemn Iran's attacks against Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. This resolution was submitted by Bahrain on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council members and Jordan, and co-sponsored by 135 UN member states. Thirteen members of the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution. Two members, Russia and China, abstained.

However, the Security Council reverted to its usual pattern of dysfunction when another resolution proposed by Bahrain on opening the Strait of Hormuz to unimpeded shipping came up for a vote on April 7th. Abdullatif bin Rashid Alzayani, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Bahrain, the Security Council President for the month of April, said before the vote, “We declare loudly and unequivocally before this Council, which is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security, that [Iran] has no right to close this waterway to international navigation.”

Russia and China ignored the plea of this member state of the Gulf Cooperation Council, whose members represent the primary source of global energy supplies. They vetoed the draft resolution that sought to encourage UN member states interested in the use of commercial maritime routes in the Strait of Hormuz to “coordinate efforts” defensively, helping to ensure the security of navigation in the Strait.

Speaking after the vote, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Al Zayani said, “Failing to adopt this resolution sends the wrong signal to the world, to the peoples of the world, the signal that the threat to international waterways can pass without any decisive action by the international organization responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

The United States Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, said, “The United States stands with the people of the Gulf at this moment of reckoning.” China and the Russian Federation, on the other hand, he added, “sided with a regime that seeks to intimidate the Gulf into submission.”

Ambassador Waltz emphasized that “the Strait of Hormuz is too vital to the world to be used as hostage, to be choked, to be weaponized by any one State.” Addressing Iran’s representative directly, Ambassador Waltz warned: “As people go hungry and as economies suffer, it is squarely on your shoulders.”

France’s UN representative denounced the vetoes and remarked that the resolution aimed to encourage “purely defensive measures.” His words rang hollow, however, since France and other NATO members have refused to work with the United States in a coalition of the willing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz until all hostilities end first. As President Trump said in expressing his disgust with NATO, “They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger!”

President Trump, as the leader of the free world, is carrying the burden on his shoulders of finally confronting the Iranian regime’s evil ways, particularly to ensure that Iran will not become nuclear-armed. The United Nations has done nothing to help. If anything, it has gotten in the way by trying to whitewash the Iranian regime’s abysmal record of human rights abuses and failing to endorse defensive measures to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

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