. . enrichment facility near Qom for several years. . . . The existence of this facility underscores Iran’s continuing unwillingness to meet its obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions. . . . Iran’s decision to build yet another nuclear facility without notifying the IAEA represents a direct challenge to the basic compact at the center of the non-proliferation regime. . . . [T]he size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program. Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow . . . [and is] threatening the stability and security of the region and the world.

In other words, when President Obama addressed the General Assembly and Security ...

. . enrichment facility near Qom for several years. . . . The existence of this facility underscores Iran’s continuing unwillingness to meet its obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions. . . . Iran’s decision to build yet another nuclear facility without notifying the IAEA represents a direct challenge to the basic compact at the center of the non-proliferation regime. . . . [T]he size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program. Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow . . . [and is] threatening the stability and security of the region and the world.

In other words, when President Obama addressed the General Assembly and Security Council he already knew that Iran was ignoring international standards, and its latest violations endangered international peace and security more than ever before. And yet he deliberately refused to put Iran on the agenda of the Council summit — the same Council that he claimed bore responsibility for responding to such threats.

President Obama knew that if the magnitude of the Iranian threat were revealed yesterday, the emptiness of his resolution would have been embarrassingly obvious and his cover blown. In public, at the highest levels of the U.N, he heralded generalities as significant. In private, he was petitioning lower levels of the U.N. to act on startling specifics of the Iranian threat.

Why did the president not present this same evidence to the Security Council, the body with “the authority and the responsibility to respond”? Why did he not challenge world leaders to deal with the same Iranian threat that he privately was pressing upon U.N. bureaucrats?

There is only one possible answer: President Obama does not have the political will to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.


cross-linked to: EYE ON THE UN

— Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and executive director of Human Rig