The venue was different — the grand hall of the UN General Assembly — but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s message was the same as it has been for months.
Fresh from his performance as a human pinata at Columbia University, the Iranian president took the opportunity this week to remind the nations of the world just how much contempt he and his country held for the UN Security Council. In sum, a lot.
After two sets of sanctions, and many more deadlines for Iran to suspend its nuclear program, Ahmadinejad dared the nations of the world to stop Iran’s nuclear program. He scoffed at the power of the UN Security Council and declared that “the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed.” He said it was not a “political” issue for the council, but a “technical” one to be refereed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
That brought the quick response from the U.S: You wish.
“The Iranian president is badly mistaken if he thinks the international community is going to forget about the fact that his country is continuing — against the will of the UN Security Council — its nuclear research programs,” said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.
And from Germany: “Let’s not fool ourselves,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said. “If Iran were to acquire the nuclear bomb, the consequences would be disastrous.”
One of the sharpest warnings came from France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Allowing Iran to build a bomb, he said, would be an “unacceptable risk to the stability in the region and in the world.” In his first major foreign policy speech a few weeks ago, he startled some of his countrymen by asserting that Iran could be attacked militarily if it did not abide by Security Council resolutions to suspend its uranium enrichment program.
Sarkozy’s bluntness is welcome, as is his government’s apparent willingness to turn up the economic pressure on Tehran. The French reportedly are taking the lead among the European allies to cut off bank lending and technology available to Iran, in an effort to hobble Iran’s already wobbly economy.
It’s not hard to understand why Iran desperately wants to turn a political crisis into a “technical” matter to be handled by the IAEA. Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei has been playing along for years with Iran’s diplomats. He’s tolerated Iran’s stonewalling and stalling.
Now he’s arguing that the world needs to give Iran a few more months to see if it will live up to a recent agreement to come clean on nearly two decades of nuclear subterfuge.
“By November or December, we will be able to know if Iran is acting in good faith or not,” ElBaradei said. Bad idea. Russia has already seized on this opportunity to signal that it would not back any new sanctions against its trading partner for the time being.
Despite ElBaradei’s willingness to play along with Iran’s rope-a-dope strategy, there’s no need to wait until November or December to divine Tehran’s intent. Its strategy of stalling the world while building its nuclear capabilities is clear — and working to perfection.
Whatever Iran does, or doesn’t, divulge about its years of deceit is beside the point. Tehran is still running its outlaw nuclear program. It is building and installing centrifuges, enriching uranium and following a path that could lead to the bomb. It is defying the Security Council.
ElBaradei has sought to promote negotiations and slow a third round of sanctions. But a Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t make you secretary of state.
The actual U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, complained recently that the IAEA “is not in the business of diplomacy.” She’s right and ElBaradei should butt out. Playing along with the mullahs, pretending they still have some credibility instead of loudly and continually insisting they suspend enrichment, isn’t helping his cause.
