The UN's moment
May 3, 2006
The Chicago Tribune
Original Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0605030035may03,1,4263102.story


Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems to relish his role on the world stage. He delights in pounding his chest about Iran's nuclear progress and issuing venomous threats against Israel and the West. When faced last week with the prospect of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran for its unbridled nuclear program, Ahmadinejad had a pithy response ready: The Iranian nation won't give a damn about such useless resolutions.

Now we'll find out if the world will call his bluff. The Security Council is set to take up Iran's nuclear ambitions on Wednesday.

This is a critical moment, a moment when the world's attention is fully engaged. It marks the beginning of a diplomatic path that will lead, months or years from now, to a nuclear Iran ... or to a world spared that peril.

As the council gathers, it confronts a lengthy and frightening bill of particulars on Iran, including:

- Iran's long history of deceit in its nuclear programs. For nearly two decades, Iran hid from inspectors a massive and underground nuclear effort that it claims was intended to generate civilian nuclear power. In 2002, its secret nuclear program was exposed. Since then, Tehran has been urged time and again by the International Atomic Energy Agency to come clean. Iran has responded with obfuscation, delay and denial. Instead of abiding by its promise to freeze uranium enrichment, Iran bulled ahead, announcing to the world in April that it had joined the nuclear club. In the most recent IAEA report, there is an alarming hint that Iran also could have a secret program to reprocess plutonium, the other material used to fuel a nuclear bomb.

- Terrorists have no better friends than Iran's tyrannical mullahs. These leaders have crushed dissent and a democratic reform movement in Iran. They have poured resources into terrorist groups like Hezbollah and the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories.

- Tehran has vehemently called for the destruction of Israel. Ahmadinejad has described Israel as a rotten, dried tree that would be annihilated by one storm--presumably a reference to a nuclear attack.

- Three years of intense diplomatic negotiations, with the Europeans and the Russians, have produced nothing. Iran has dismissed offers that would allow it to buy nuclear fuel and reactors. It has insisted it has a right to enrich uranium on its own soil and has threatened to withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty unless it is allowed to exercise that right. What kind of behavior could the world expect from a nuclear Iran? Would it pass the nukes to terrorists? Spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East?

There are divergent opinions on how to stop Iran. The U.S. and Europe favor a strong resolution that carries the threat of sanctions, including the possibility of military action. Russia and China favor a far softer approach.

This is the challenge the Security Council faces, the possibility that it will once again be conquered by its own divisions.

It cannot shuffle responsibility back to the IAEA. If the council follows its natural inclination to speak softly and carry a big carrot, if it is true to its recent history of avoidance when confronted by nations flouting its will, then it will richly deserve Ahmadinejad's scorn.

It will have failed in its central mission, the reason that the word security is in its name. The world will become a more dangerous place.