Commentary and Newsletters

Anne Bayefsky

Believe it or not: Iran becomes UN disarmament leader

Friday, April 14, 2006

On April 10th the UN Disarmament Commission elected Iran as one of its Vice-Chairpersons.

Afterwards, the UN's Under Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Nobuaki Tanaka, said the Commission "played a unique role" with "the advantage of being a fully universal deliberative body." This is the UN fiction which brings us closer to nuclear war with each passing day. The allusion is to universal democracy, though the majority of voters are non-democratic and include thugs, racists and war-mongers.

The Indonesian representative speaking for the so-called Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which holds the balance of power in all universal UN bodies, praised the Commission's importance and the UN framework. He then maintained non-proliferation should be chained to disarmament.

Bringing up the rear was the new Iranian Vice-Chairperson. Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi sought to reassure his UN comrades about Iran's disinterest in acquiring nuclear weapons by stating: "the national security of non-nuclear-weapon States was in deep jeopardy." A not-so-subtle indication of the rationale behind Iran's sprint to the nuclear arms finish-line.