The United Nations has just created a new "entity" on women's rights, called U.N. Women. Elections to its governing board are now being organized. How long before Iran wins a seat?
If the question sounds absurd, the realities at the U.N. are even more mind-bending. The most recent high-profile outrage on this score was Iran gaining a seat in April on the U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women. But that's the least of it. The reality is that Iran, despite being under four sets of binding sanctions resolutions by the U.N. Security Council, has learned to manipulate the institution in ways that make a mockery not only of the U.N. itself, but also of U.S. claims of diplomatic competence.
Rarely remarked upon, but even more appalling than Iran's beachhead on the women's rights commission, is Iran's seat on the 36-member executive board of the U.N.'s flagship agency, the U.N. Development Program, headquartered in New York. Iran actually chaired the UNDP executive board last year, during the thick of the bloody protests in which Teheran's mullocracy was beating, jailing and killing protesters calling for democratic development in Iran.
That same UNDP executive board, with Iran still in its lineup today, also serves as the governing body for the U.N. population fund (UNFPA) and the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Iran's three-year term on the UNDP board expires at the end of 2010. But have no fear that Iran will be shut out of U.N. high councils on the status of women--or, for that matter, issues involving children and food aid. The newly created entity, U.N. Women, with or without Iran on its board, will be holding joint meetings with the executive boards not only of the UNDP, but also of the New York-based U.N. children's agency (UNICEF) and the Rome-based World Food Program (WFP). Iran sits on the boards of both UNICEF and the WFP, where its terms extend, respectively, through the end of 2011 and 2012.
Iran also fields a hefty presence among the governing councils of U.N. outfits involved in matters germane to weapons, outer space and global crime. Through 2012 Iran--the world's leading terrorist-sponsoring state--is a vice chair of the Executive Council of the U.N.'s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Iran sits on two major commissions of the Vienna-based U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), including the UNODC's 20-member Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, where in 2009 it won a three-year-term. And this past April Iran won a seat with a four-year term on the U.N.'s Geneva-based Commission on Science and Technology for Development--never mind its brazen violations of U.N. sanctions on its rogue nuclear program.
As for outer space, there's really no need for NASA to reach out to the Iranian portion of the Muslim world. Iran is already engaged in preemptive outreach. At the U.N.'s Vienna-based Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), the Legal Subcommittee--which works on who controls what in "the rational and equitable use of geostationary orbit"--is currently chaired by the head of the Iranian Space Agency, Ahmad Talebzadeh.
Iran also sits on the governing council of the U.N.'s Geneva-based refugee agency (UNHCR), and on the governing boards of the two U.N. agencies headquartered in Nairobi: the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) and the U.N. Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat). At the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in Rome, Iran has just finished a stint as chair of the governing council--but don't worry, it will be back on the council next year, already listed as a member for 2011-13. Meanwhile Iran currently has an envoy on the FAO finance committee, spanning 2009-11.
It was an Iranian initiative that paved the way for the U.N.'s current Alliance of Civilizations, launched in 2005. President Barack Obama dropped by one of its meetings in Istanbul last year, and the U.S., which declined to join under President Bush, has now signed on as a member. This Alliance, a murky globe-girdling exercise in "bridge-building," is a pet project of Spain and Turkey--where the Islamic ruling party, the AKP, has been unveiling itself as Iran's new bedfellow.
All this comes along with the more prominent use made by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the U.N. stage, where he has spoken every year since 2005 at the annual September opening in New York of the General Assembly. It's a good bet that in just two months he'll be back for his sixth performance. Beyond that, over the past 15 months alone Ahmadinejad has taken the main stage at U.N. conclaves in Geneva (the anti-Semitic Durban Review Conference, April 2009), Copenhagen (the U.N. climate jamboree, Dec. 2009) and New York (the Nonproliferation Treaty review conference, May 2010).
In sum, while it rarely gets much attention, there's a strong Iranian tang to the U.N. alphabet soup. This is a bizarre and alarming scene, given an Iranian regime that continues to indulge in the execution of juveniles and homosexuals; the stoning and mandatory veiling of women; the jailing, torture and murder of democratic dissidents; the spread and support of terrorist groups not only in the Middle East, but around the globe; and the sanctions-busting pursuit of nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
Some of this orgy of Iranian influence at the U.N. developed on the watch of President George Bush. Yet more has been spawned since Obama took office. What has the U.S. been doing to push back? In Washington, the U.S. Treasury has staff working overtime trying to chase down the constantly morphing networks of Iranian front companies, reflagged ships and other Iranian maneuvers to dodge both U.S. and U.N. sanctions.
What's the State Department doing to help? Officially, State finally shepherded through a fourth round of Iran sanctions at the U.N. in June. But here's how the diplomatic back shop works. When Ahmadinejad decided to attend the Nonproliferation Treaty review conference in New York this past May, Iran at the last minute filed a blizzard of visa applications for Ahmadinejad's entourage, most of them submitted just three working days or fewer before this entourage proposed to touch down in New York. That should have set off big alarms, given Iran's record of exploiting the U.N. system and abusing its U.N. foothold in New York to recruit sanctions busters and oversee a large alleged Iranian front operation, the Fifth-Avenue-based Alavi Foundation, right out of Iran's U.N. Mission in Manhattan--as described in a slew of federal court documents over the past three years.
How did the State Department handle these last-minute Iranian visa requests? There was every opportunity to deliver a solid rebuke simply by letting the applications languish for more than three working days. State is usually more than adept at such delays, for reasons far less compelling. Instead, at Iran's behest, State hustled to approve, pronto, a staggering total of 80 visas for Ahmadinejad's retinue. Iran then complained to the U.N., because along with the 80 approved, one visa request was denied. Within the warped backrooms of the U.N., Iran continues to expand its web of access and influence. Instead of standing up to this, the Obama Administration--now dispensing more than $6 billion per year to bankroll almost one-quarter of the U.N.'s budget--keeps rolling over. Why's that?
Claudia Rosett, a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.
